Nigh Infernal
by Electric Muse
Summary: A relationship between two completely different people is not always an "Opposites Attract" situation. It's not that simple. And for Rorschach, a situation that involves attraction is never simple. Rorschach and OC. No romantic pairings. Complete!
1. The End is Never and Always Nigh

_Rorschach's Journal, October 1__st__ 1985._

_The alleys stink of lust and terror. Fear erodes the good in this city away until only fear is comprehensible among the chaos. _

_Alone. _

_Policemen deal drugs. Companies sell their people away to the highest bidder. Flesh for sale. Our children are your dogs and whipping stools. Shadows are alive, creeping into human minds and corrupting, deteriorating, destroying._

_Crime: Up._

_Death: Up._

_Rape: Up._

_Human decency: Down._

_The manholes shriek and shudder as blood is poured down their throats and they swallow. This city is a cannibal. But it's food is parasitic, and it eats its way right out again. Is consumed by the city. The cycle continues._

_Must get to work. Become a whore for the system and it will be kind to you. Will never sink to that level again. The poster selling 'The Scent of Love' rapes my bedroom window from 20 feet away, plastered on the wall on a building nearby. Must remember to tear it down. Never remember. Been there for weeks now._

_Now leave._

Tattered footsteps painted the canvas of the empty sidewalk, grey as a battlefield corpse. It was dark, the early morning just setting in as the dead yellow sun snuck across the ground, a bright cloak that only brought discomfort to the denizens that appeared out of gutters and live in their cubicles until the cloak retracted and they dipped back into their gutters again. The footsteps painted life into the dead sidewalk. More and more footsteps made their way from the dark into that warm blanket, and the street was soon full.

One of those pairs of footprints had a slow gait, contrasting greatly from the quicker, fleeting steps that splattered the ground nearby. These feet belonged to a person of a shorter stature, about 5'4", average body type, just a little bit overweight, but not so much that it would greatly show. High cheekbones; a pair of lips that drifted a millimeter off to the left disfigure the face with a distorted grace, a thin nose and Harlequin eyes above and between. Thick, curling almond hair was pulled back into a tight bun, a couple loose curls drifting like torn cloth behind the head.

She walked through the door to the burger joint, and tossed on her hat. Brygida's workday had started.

"Gimme a cheeseburger and a coke…" The 13th customer of the day said, a lit cigarette clenched in between his teeth.

Brygida said that it would cost him only a leg and an arm for such a meal: $3.75. She smiled the way she was supposed to smile: that nice, ear-to-ear smile, no teeth. Teeth can mean hostility, and you don't want your customers thinking that you're some rabid dog. The man handed over a couple of crumbled one-dollar bills. They looked like they had been recently in the thong of a stripper. But the woman paid that little fact no mind, and she straightened out the bills before placing them neatly into the compartment tailored for each specific bill.

"Break time." The manager said, patting Brygida on the back. She smiled and walked off, opening the back door to the ruddy old building. It was steeped in the smell of frying fat and genetically engineered tomatoes; or onions that didn't make you cry when cut. She walked through the median point in the doorframe, from greasy steam into smoggy streets. Taking a granola bar from her pocket, she watched the smoke rise from a fire a couple of blocks down.

Chaos wasn't abnormal for that city. An abnormal chaos would be something along the lines of everything going right for a day, and the Christian Conservatives would call it blessed while the rest called it the Apocalypse.

But none of this was on Brygida's mind as she rubbed her eye, some grease vapor having irritated her cornea. Shoving the remainder of the snack into her apron, she returned inside, unable to see through her right eye. In an instant, she was on the floor; ketchup stains a lovely new addition to her already hilariously ridiculous work uniform. Her manager sighed, "Go home. Take the day off."

She gladly did so. After changing out of her work clothes and washing the grease from her eye, she stopped at a telephone booth, she called a friend of hers, asking her if she wanted to do anything that day. The friend replied that she would love to, and that she needed to pick up a new dress for her sister anyway. They figured where they would meet, and hung up.

The Polish woman, otherwise known as Brygida Katarzyna, walked down Main Street, her heels clacking on the half painted canvas of the afternoon sidewalk. A silhouette of two people, with what looked like a missile head crashing into them as they held each other, loomed in the corner. Brygida always thought it was beautifully morbid. At least they had each other at the end.

She came upon the corner where her friend stood, Marja, a blond little thing with thin, long legs, a round face and a jovial smile. She hooked her arm with Brygida's and started twittering about her day and her older sister: a model with a very luxurious career. Marja had always reminded Brygida of her mother. A stick shaped older woman with a high-pitched voice and very spastic tendencies. Behind her back Brygida and her friends would call her Parrot. She had a sharp face, and enjoyed wearing colorful clothing: She had never gotten over the sixties and seventies. When she was a child, Brygida would always have a peace sign somewhere on her being, and her large green eyes done up with natural make up. She looked back at herself and had the impression that her mother just smeared dirt on her face.

Entering into the clothing shop, the two girls were overcome with the smell of lilacs smothered in strawberry jelly and painted over with the smell that the color pink would give off, if colors could have smells affixed to them. A primped up plush woman with large hips and a smile just as large and intimidating caught them at the door and started talking in her large New York accent. The woman pulled Marja away while Brigida was left to her own devices.

Those devices included hangers, high heel shoes and prying eyes. After looking around the dress section, Brygida looked for something less innocent to be interested in. She spotted a couple, a man and a woman, a baby on the woman's hip as the pair bickered in a whisper, but one could see the ferocity in their eyes and their curled lips and their clenched fists. Their tones weren't audible in the shrill ringing of hangers being pushed along racks, but the girl was certain that they were growling, like tiny dogs. They would both be hoarse by the end of their little trip. Meanwhile, the baby chewed on a tassel of the window curtain, blissfully unaware of his parents arguing. It was sad. Brygida couldn't help but think about what would happen to the kid.

Divorce.

Custody battle. Or adoption.

Messy room. Yelling. Perhaps a red cheek.

Cruel work. Horribly low pay.

Death.

Life has us trapped and suicide is a cop out. Brygida's eyes narrowed, not in hatred or because she was angry, but she had forgotten her glasses at home, and she was trying to see whom the boy looked like more: His mother or his father…

Definitely his father. Actually, he didn't look at all like his mother. Her only guess would be that he had an affair, and the real mother of the boy dropped the love child off at his door.

The woman squeezed the child's closed fist too tight and the little boy cried out in pain, but the woman didn't seem to pay any mind as she kept half yelling at the man.

"Excuse me…" Brygida said softly, tapping the woman on the shoulder. She turned around, a lump of dry, dark brown hair refusing it's natural pathway of whipping about her head, and instead staying glued to her head by pain of a pound of hairspray.

"Do you need something?" She replied, impatient.

"Perhaps I could take your little boy for a moment? You seem to be in the middle of something…" She looked at the man, who was in turn, looking at the tassel that his son decided to gum on.

"Sure. Whatever." The woman shoved the young boy into her arms and then placed her hands on her hips. Brygida looked at the little boy's fist. One of his nails had sliced into his palm, and he was tearing up fast. She walked away from the sighting couple and up to one of the desks, where a red head stood putting dresses on racks.

"I'm sorry, can you help me...?" She asked. The red head turned around, an un-amused look on his face. He walked up the counter, and stopped, as if waiting for what she was going to say next. Brygida shifted the child in her arms, and held out his hand with the cut on it.

"Bandage." The man reached under the desk and pulled out a box of band-aids. Brygida thanked him and unwrapped one of them with her teeth and fingers, placing the boy on the counter and pressing the band-aid onto his palm. She smiled at him, as he seemed to calm down, sniffling a little and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands.

"Thank you." Brygida said, smiling at the man. He didn't smile back. Simply nodded and returned to what he was doing.

'_What an odd person...'_ She thought. His expression hadn't changed once since she had first seen him. Most people would at least look like they felt bad for the kid, but he just... Stared on. She cooed to the little boy and brought him over the women's section. Luckily enough, Marja had been completely taken in by the large woman's charisma, and was looking at wedding dresses for the wedding that she never wanted to have in the first place.

Out of the corner of her eye, Brygida saw the fighting couple beginning to walk out of the store, and she rushed after them.

"Hey--!" She called, and the man stopped while the woman kept walking; she even turned the corner, 'round the block, disappearing from sight. The man's eyes widened slightly as Brygida stopped in front of him with his child.

"I believe this belongs to you." She said with a bittersweet smile. The man took the little boy with a quick 'Thank you', and walked after his wife. Brygida opened the door to the store, "I think I'm going to go home, Marja..."

"Alright..." The blond was completely hypnotized by the large woman. Brygida hoped that she didn't blow all her money on things that she would never use... She turned around and subsequently bumped into someone, her forehead colliding with his or her nose.

"Oh—I'm so sorry—" She said quickly, half way realized how often she had apologized that day...

"That was a nice thing you did." The person she ran into said. She looked up a little and then smiled, "Oh, hello, I didn't see you there."

"It's alright." The man said without a smile, "Did the man forget you had his kid?"

"Yes and no. He just forgot him completely, as did his wife." Brygida ran her fingers through a curl that had been shaken loose of her bun, "I'm not sure it was such a good idea now..."

The man set his sign on the ground, "World is ending soon anyway."

Brygida chuckled to herself, "Is the news in?"

"Yes. No news of impending doom. So sad that the world does not know."

"That's why you're here, right?"

The man looked at her, his intense stare never wavering from her face, and he answered with a simple, "Yes."

Brygida took this time to bow out, "I'll see you later, sir."

"Goodbye." The man walked off with his sign: "The End Is Nigh". The end was always "nigh". But that didn't mean it was any time soon. The word 'nigh' means 'near', and the definition of near was: "A short time away in the future". Well, the future is something that hasn't happened yet. If something were a short time away in the measurement of a time that hasn't happened yet, technically, it could happen at any time. He'd been there for as long as she could remember going to work, and she could only imagine how much longer he'd walked those same roads...

She found it fitting that he should wander the streets for eternity...


	2. A Greater Good

Oh crap, I didn't actually put an author's note in the beginning did I?

Oh well. Better late than never. This is my Rorschach fic! Indeed, it is a romance... dramatic... adventure-y type thing. Mind you, this is going to be REALLY hard without getting Rorschach out of character, so if you see some OOC, TELL ME PLEASE. And I will never do that to him again. This project is really important to me, so please help me make it a good, solid stepping stone in the direction of writing good pieces of literature.

Anyway, please enjoy the second chapter of my story~ Thank you!

"Hello Mr. Newsvendor." Brygida said pleasantly, picking up and _New Frontiersman_, and flipping it open.

The newsvendor liked to be called "Mr. Newsvendor"; he saw it as a sign of respect; he was so fervent about the idea that newsvendors were the Stoics sent to earth to help the world through it's pain by being the rock solid support beams. He smiled at her, "Hey kid. How's your mom?"

"In the house with dad. Still." She replied. The last word was like a pen stabbing through a piece of paper: sharp and staining.

"Still a useless pile of veteran flesh, huh? You should come by my house again some time. I'll make pizza."

Brygida smiled slightly, "I'd like that a lot..." Tucking the newspaper under her arm, she waved at the vendor and walked off...

_Rorschach's Journal, That Night_

_Was subject to attempted seduction by street walking woman in red. Almost broke her teeth to get her to be quiet. She looked away, I ducked down an alley. _

_Lucky for her she was blind in one eye. Couldn't see me after that. Left in a huff. Will make sure to move out of sight next time she is seen._

_Remember girl who almost broke nose with her forehead today. Will say hello to her before she can accidently almost break nose again. Or another bone._

Brygida woke up that morning, yawning and exhausted. She hadn't gotten any sleep that night; the cats were yowling louder than usual. Dragging herself out of bed, she poured herself a cup of coffee.

'_Oh shit...' _She looked at the clock.

10:37.

'_I'm meeting her in a half hour!' _She ran back to her room, quickly putting on a pair of bellbottom jeans, a tank top, and an overcoat, and then dashed out the door.

Briskly trotting down the sidewalk, she differentiated herself from the rest of the crowd as her almond colored hair bounced in and out of view from the canopy of heads moving swiftly down the streets.

Ducking into a café, Brygida ordered a black coffee and sat in the corner, waiting for her appointed date...

"Bridget?"

Brygida turned and smiled, "Hello Laurie. How are you?"

The older woman smiled, slipping her dark hair behind her ear, "Not bad. How are your parents?"

"Secluded as ever... My father skipped his 37th appointment in a row, a new record." She replied, a slight bite to her words, "How is my favorite aunt? And Jon?"

"My mother is good. I talked to her yesterday, she said that she wants to see me soon." She quickly ordered a coffee and sat down, "I told her that I was meeting you today and she told me to tell you to tell your mother that she needs to go out to California to see her some time soon. She feels unfairly isolated..." She coughed into a handkerchief, "And Jon is well. He was busy with his studies today, so he couldn't come to see you."

Brygida shook her head, "It's fine. It's only been about a month; not too bad for the most important man in the world."

Laurie chuckled as a young black man set their coffees on the table. She thanked him and blew the steam from her cup, "You know how when you blow the steam from your coffee, you're actually blowing off the faster moving molecules, thus lowering the average speed of the molecules and cooling off your drink?"

"Mm-hm." Brygida hummed in agreement through her coffee.

"Jon was talking earlier today about how he can see what actually makes them move... Unfortunately, I'm not **all knowing** enough to even understand the explanation that he offered, much less reiterate it..." She said, a little distant.

Jon, AKA Dr. Manhattan, throughout Laurie's life with him, had been becoming more and more difficult to relate with. In the beginning, when he left Janey, there was something of an emotionality behind that blue skin and solid white eyes. But as the years dragged on, Laurie was subject to the deterioration of that emotion, and she had felt left behind, like the fish left behind in the pond as the others sprouted legs and walked on the land.

She felt like she would watch the evolutionary process leave her behind.

"Don't bother trying to think about it too much, Laurie." Brygida replied, "You know that I don't like hearing about things that I'll never get, anyway... You're a really strong woman, being with Jon all these years."

"I wouldn't call it strength, particularly..." She smiled a little, "But thank you. I need someone who feels the way I do about things..."

Brygida cracked a smile as Laurie lit a cigarette, "It's not a problem. I enjoy our meetings... I think I'm going to get a new job."

Laurie took a drag and blew it out, replying, "Where do you want to go?"

"I think I'm going to ask Bernard if I can help him with the news..." She brought one foot up onto the seat of the chair and leaned her chin onto her knee, "I'd like that a lot more than food service..."

"I doubt there would be enough money in that for you to make a living, sweetheart..."

"I don't mind. I live in a terrible apartment anyway; I've already paid the rent off. All I need is food... And I can beg for that, if need be." She chuckled to herself, "Or I can always mooch off of you and Jon. You've always said that you have too much money for your own good."

She smiled, "If it would give me more time with you, I'd love to."

The two of them talked for another two hours, dabbling with subjects like love, the world, what justice really is, after Laurie had read Plato's _Republic_, and other things. Laurie was soon called away, and she quickly hugged Brygida before smiling, "I'll see you later, cousin..."

She walked away.

Brygida paid for her coffee with what little money she had, and left the coffee shop, heading towards her place of current employment. She walked quickly along the sidewalk, once again cloaked in the sun's elegance, which didn't amount to much in New York City. The small chain-business burger joint was overcrowded that day. Brygida was overjoyed.

She walked into the restaurant, waiting in the ever-elongating line for her turn to piss off her manager. Customer upon customer moved out of the way as their orders were filled, until it was finally up to Brygida.

The manager was at the cashier. Lucky her.

He gawked, "Bridget?! You were supposed to be here an hour ago!! Get in back, now. You're getting a pay deduction for being late."

"Actually..." She said, crossing her arms, "I'm here to quit."

"... Quit?? W-Wait! I'll pay you double if you stay! Oh god, don't leave now, please--!"

But her mind was made up. She smiled at him, told him that her last paycheck would be expected within the week, and left him to drown in his conformity. She walked out of there, feeling like she could breath again for the first time in years...

This time with a bounce in her step, Brygida walked down the street, where Bernard sat reading a paper. She tapped his shoulder with her pinky finger, "Hey Bernard?"

He glanced up, breaking into a grin, "Hey there girly! How goes it? You need a paper? You weren't here this morning, I thought something had happened..."

"I overslept. But no, I'm not here for a paper." She cleared her throat, "I was actually wondering if I could take a job here with you."

"Hmm... Don't you work at that burger place?"

"Quit."

"Then of course you can work here. Pay will be meager comparatively, though."

"I don't care. I've been working for money when I should've been working for happiness... Besides, I'm getting out of this place soon anyway."

He smiled a little, "The Metropolitan still calling your name?"

Brygida put on a dreamy smile, leaning onto the cart like a love struck youth who had just seen their object of affection, "Ah yes... The Metropolitan Opera will forever be my one true love... Boys and men alike be damned, my singing is the only thing I care about..."

"That's an odd mind set for a 19 year old girl to be in." Bernard chuckled, tugging on his hat, "But I guess that's what makes you so special. Come back tomorrow around noon. I'll show you the ropes and stuff."

"Alright, I'll see you the—"

"Hello."

Brygida turned to see the same man that she had bumped into the day before. The same green jacket, same red-orange hair, same melancholy droop in his eyes. He was staring at her. It was kind of intimidating.

She smiled a little, "Hello again... H-how are you?"

"Fine. You?"

"... A little surprised actually... I don't think you've said hello to me before..."

"I wanted to make sure that you noticed me before you had the chance to accidently almost break my nose again." He said with a curt nod.

A little embarrassed by the mention of the incident, Brygida felt herself blush slightly, "I'm sorry about that... Won't happen again, promise..."

"Good." He turned around and left.

'_... Strange...'_ Was the only thing she thought before turning around herself and walking back home...

_Rorschach's Journal, October 2__nd __1985_

_Uneventful night. Scum is sleeping. Fucking in the shadows. Increasing their numbers. Will be careful to look out for babies in trashcans. Morbid thought, but must be done. Too many trashcans gone unlooked. Dead bodies of infants spilled out onto sidewalk during trash collection._

_... Must look out for trashcans._

_Will turn in early tonight. Need the rest for the coming onslaught of carnage._

Rorschach awoke that morning at 5:12 AM, as the sun rose above the smog and terror, overshadowing all of it with it's unattainable light. Crunching on a piece of dry bread, the masked vigilante sat atop a homeless shelter, where he heard the low grumbling of men and women asleep. There were too many homeless. Too many people driven to commit crimes in order to live.

It was wrong. They shouldn't be allowed to do that; live like that.

There was nothing that Rorschach could do except for population control. No mercy. You hurt someone, wrong someone, steal from someone – someone being a good person – and Rorschach was there to set you straight.

Even if straight did mean dead. Jails weren't big enough. The system wasn't strong enough. The government doesn't care enough.

Nothing is ever enough.

Finished off the piece of bread, Rorschach silently slipped away, It was daytime. He was leaving the stage to the mask today...

Brygida sat, playing with a curl of hair as she read a comic book at the newsstand she now worked at. It was such a beautiful day as she read about Superman beating up those communists... Such a terrible idea, Communism... But she knew. Stalin was the real threat, not Communism itself.

What an asshole...

At her side, Bernard spoke with a customer. They laughed and talked about the weather, how good it was comparatively to how the season's been going. Almost winter and no snow yet. Hopefully they wouldn't have much. Even the snow soon turned to black slush in New York.

Only in New York. Taint Central. Where someone went to have their dreams crushed. Enjoy the gift shops.

Chewing on a piece of toffee, Brygida looked up as Bernard patted the man on the back, handed him a newspaper, and watched him walk off.

He sighed, "That Parker... Such a nice guy." He patted Brygida on the head, "He asked who you were."

"What did you say?" Brygida asked.

He shrugged, "You were a college student looking for some help with money."

"But... I'm not in college..."

He winked, "He doesn't know that. He said he'd come by more often with the spare change he had. I think he thinks you're cute."

She cracked a small smile, "You're quite manipulative..."

"This town makes manipulators out of us all, darling..."


	3. Broken Glasses

It was a cold night. The cold hung over your head, followed you closely, and when you stopped, you felt it sway through you, settle, like a curtain. Brygida tried to make sure that her feet didn't stop that night as she walked back to her apartment. And even though she wasn't stopping, she still felt the cool fingers of the night slipping through her muscles, freezing her tendons, making her slower, less agile, more vulnerable...

She quickened her pace. The night would not make her a victim. Too many of her friends had been stupid enough to be caught in a dark alley behind a trashcan. She refused to be that person. Her boots clacked on the sidewalk, giving her some comfort in that strangely silent, cold, creeping night. Their steady rhythm synced up with her heartbeat, and as she moved faster, the drum in her chest fluttereding to keep up. She was frightening herself, but that fear would drive her home safely...

She hoped.

She heard a crash and jumped, her feet stopping, her heart as well as she held her breath...

A small cat walked out from an alley and she sighed, the beat in her chest returning to normal. She smiled and picked the small thing up, cooing to it and petting it's ears. The poor thing only had three paws...

"G-Give me your money..."

She turned, clutching the kitten to her chest. A man stood behind her, slightly crouched, shaking, a knife in his hand and a shine in his eyes. Tears...

He jabbed the knife at her and yelled with a cracked voice, "I said give me your money!"

Brygida set the cat down, and it sauntered off. She put one hand in her pocket, slowly, and the other in front of her, not like that would help her if he went for her with the knife...

"I don't have much money..." She said slowly, "But you can have it..."

"Good." He spat, and she could see his whole body convulse; he was trying to hold back the tears that she saw in his eyes...

"Are you alright...?" She asked, taking the few bills that she had with her and putting them on the sidewalk in front of her.

"... My wife just left me..." The man said, scrambling to pick up the bills.

"I'm so sorry... How about we take that money... And I'll go get a coffee with you, and we can talk about this..."

The man looked up at her, surprised and slightly in shock. Even _she_ could see that he had never mugged anyone before. She was lucky, if he were any more experienced or any less distraught, she would be either dead or raped by now... or both...

"I..."

But he didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. From out of nowhere, a knee smashed into the man's face, and Brygida could see in slow motion his face cracking under the pressure, his right eye bulging out, a couple of teeth breaking. He spun to the floor, crashing into the sidewalk, skidding blood.

Brygida couldn't stop staring at the man... An utter mess one second later. What had done such a terrible thing...?

"_Mugging girl. Not good."_

She looked up as the voice finally reached her ears and made sense to her. She looked at the new comer... And instantly recoiled. The only things that she saw were those shifting black images on a pure white canvas; a terror; a mask...

The man – she assumed he was a man from the voice – walked over the mugger, kicked him in the ribs when he tried to stand up. The poor guy doubled over in pain, hacking up blood. He pointed his knife at the person towering above him as he stood up, "P-Please... I wasn't trying-"

"_Shut up, scum. Tried to hurt girl. Bad."_

"No, he wasn't trying to hurt me, really..." Brygida said in a small voice.

But the man didn't hear her. As her mugger slowly backed away, the man drove his fist into his face, and Brygida heard a crack.

He was down.

The man was on top of him, driving his gloved hand further and further into the man's skull. What a sight... What a horror...

"Stop it! Please!" Brygida cried, but again, the man didn't hear her. She finally took the initiative and ran over to them, grabbing the masked man's arm and trying to hold him back from ultimately killing the poor man, who was so hurt, so lost, that he turned to mugging the poorest side of town...

Rorschach felt someone take hold of his arm, and thinking that the man had an accomplice perhaps placed in the shadows, he lashed out... But only after the girl was sprawled on the ground, a bruise on her collarbone, completely knocked out, did he realize that it was her...

Rorschach was in a dilemma. There was the mugger, a wrong doer, still breathing on the sidewalk, bleeding and still alive.

And there was the girl that he had attacked. Knocked out. Glasses cracked. Because of Rorschach.

He stood there and thought for a moment.

"_Kill man, leave girl. No. Not good. Leave man, take girl. Man will attack someone else. Not good. Kill man, take girl. Take girl where?_

_... Daniel. Daniel will know._

_Kill man. Take girl to Daniel._

_Save day._

_... Good deal."_

Rorschach took the man's knife. He gurgled in fear, since that was all he could do. Rorschach paid it no mind as he lined up the knife perpendicular with the man's heart... And stabbed.

One less piece of scum for the good people of the world to be afraid of.

He then looked at the girl. Why would she try and help the person who was trying to hurt her...? The only answer that Rorschach could think of was quick acting Stockholm Syndrome. He didn't bother to think of any other possibilities. He walked over to her, picking up the glasses that had been cracked when he hit her... Or maybe when they hit the floor. He tucked them into his jacket pocket. He wrapped his hand around the girl's wrist and pulled her up by her arm, holding her up like a boy with a rag-doll to get a better look at her.

Her head hung limply onto her shoulder, her toes barely brushing the ground. Rorschach "hurm"ed, brushing her hair away from her face to make sure she didn't have any major head injuries.

After another half minute of inspecting, he slung her over his shoulder and began his trek to Daniel's house...  
He couldn't help but notice that she smelled like tea...

Brygida's head swam with images in her knocked out state... The face of her 'savior', or, the mask of him, anyway... The poor man with the beaten in face, hopefully he was all right... And she saw what she thought she must've looked like: a crumpled mess on the dirty New York streets.  
In her head, she was hating herself for letting the man with the mask get in the way of her helping someone... But at the same time, she couldn't see how she could've stopped him. He came out of nowhere, and put his knee in a 6-foot man's head, while the guy was standing, and then proceeded to beat him lifeless...  
She just hoped that no one did anything to her while she was out...

Rorschach arrived at Daniel's house about 10 minutes later. He opened the window and crawled in, throwing the girl's body carelessly onto the couch. He heard footsteps on the stairs and saw the light in the kitchen turn on before seeing the body of his old friend Daniel appear in the living room.

"_Hello Daniel."_ He said.

The man Daniel was unable to speak for a moment. There was a girl. A good-looking girl. On his _couch_. And Rorschach had brought her. Or so he assumed.

Adjusting his glasses, Daniel said, "... Rorschach... What in the world..."

"_Girl was being mugged. Killed man. Girl was knocked out."_ He replied matter of factly. But he didn't add in that he had knocked her out, nor that he had no idea what to do with her...

Daniel took a deep breath, turning on the light to the living room as he walked over to the two of them. Kneeling in front of the couch, he looked the girl over. There was a dark bruise on her collarbone. It didn't seem to be broken, she was breathing normally. He saw some small indents on the bridge of her nose and frowned.

"Where are her glasses...?" He asked, looking at Rorschach. The vigilante reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of black-framed glasses. The right lens was cracked, and needed to be replaced.

Daniel sighed, rubbing his temples, "And, why did you bring her to me instead of the hospital..?"

Rorschach was silent for a moment... And continued to be silent. The retired Nite Owl decided not to pry as he looked over the girl. He lifted her head up to check for head injuries, checked her vitals, the whole deal. Standing up, he put his hands on his hips, "Well, all in all, she looks alright..."

"_Good. Going now. Farewell, Daniel."_ Rorschach turned to leave.

But Daniel put a hand on his shoulder, "You are not leaving me alone with her. You're the one who saved her, shouldn't you be the first one she sees when she wakes up?"

"_Hurm..."_ Rorschach grunted. He knew Daniel was right, but he did not want to have to deal with her screaming at him when she woke up.

But...

"_Fine. Will stay."_ Rorschach's stubbornness gave way, and he walked into the kitchen to raid Daniel's fridge.

The brown haired man sat down at the end of his couch that wasn't taken up by the unconscious girl and pinched the bridge of his nose. The first time that Rorschach visits him in months, and it's to house a victim of street violence...

Brygida awoke that morning, with the biggest headache that she had had in her life. It hurt so much, that she didn't seem to notice that she was in someone else's house...

Nor that she walked passed that person as she made her way into the kitchen. She finally seemed to notice that something was different, when she heard someone in the kitchen...

It was the masked man.

Completely dumbfounded and convinced that she was out of her mind, Brygida decided to sit on the floor of the kitchen in a fetal position and hold herself until her hallucination was over...

She felt a hand on her back and cried out in fear and surprise, kicking the person in the shin before quickly standing up and facing her alleged attacker...

"Ow..." The man was bent over, holding his leg, "I'm sorry, I must have startled you."

"Who are you...? Where am I...?" She asked, feeling like a cliché damsel in distress, so she decided to add, "If you're kidnapping me I'll kick your ass."

The brown haired man chuckled to himself before standing to his full height and shaking his head, "No. We're not kidnapping you, don't worry. My dear friend Rorschach said that you were knocked out by a mugger and he brought you here instead of leaving you on the street..."

"Rorschach...?" She turned around, the man with the black undulating spots on his mask standing behind her, eating away everything in the refrigerator. She didn't say anything about who specifically had knocked her out. She knew that this Rorschach person was the one who did it, but, he did bring her to...

"I'm sorry," She said, turning back to the brown haired man, "What's your name again...?"

"Daniel. Daniel Dreiberg. And you are?" He replied, extending his hand to her.

She smiled, taking his hand and shaking it, "Brygida Katarzyna. But you can call me Bridget." She felt her face for a moment before looking back up at the blurry face of Daniel, "You wouldn't happen to have seen my glasses anywhere...?"

Daniel gave a side-glance to Rorschach, who seemed to have forgotten that he still had the girl's glasses. He was going to say something to him, but before he could, Rorschach walked out the door.

"Aah..." Daniel put his hand on the small of her back, "I must have misplaced them. Sorry... I promise that I will find them for you, though. But for now," he sat her down in a chair at the table in the middle of the kitchen, "I'll get you something to eat."

She smiled down at the table, feeling completely blind, "Thank you Mr. Dreiberg... I'm sorry that your friend imposed me on you..."

Daniel laughed, "Oh no, not at all. I've been a bit lonely lately, I'm glad to have company." He poured some coffee and stirred it nervously, "You're welcome to stay as long as you want... Since you probably feel kind of weak, and confused... and since you can't seem to see much..."

Brygida laughed, "You don't need to convince me. I would love to stay for a while, really I would. And I take my coffee black, thank you."

Daniel smiled, placing the cup of coffee in front of the girl...

A couple hours passed. Neither of the two seemed to run out of things to say to each other as they sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and eating three-day-old bread rolls. Brygida thought Daniel Dreiberg a nice person, but he was quite reserved. She could tell by the way he tensed when she talked about one of her ex boyfriends that he was preparing for a sex story. He seemed to be anxious about such things. So she decided to lie off sexual things and instead decided to listen to him.

And after a while, she found the question that she really wanted to ask.

"What makes you so special that Rorschach would decide to bring me to your house instead of the hospital, where they would know what to do to help me?" She asked, stirring her spoon around an empty coffee cup.

He paused for a moment, seemingly thinking about what to say. She could faintly see him move his hand up to fiddle with his glasses as he replied, "Well... Before the Keene Act was passed, let's just say that he and I worked together. I was like..." He tapped his temple; it looked like a nervous habit, "his liaison to the outside world, I guess you could say..."

"You weren't a superhero?" Brygida chewed on the end of the spoon.

"God no..." Daniel replied, looking away, "I could never do something so obviously dangerous... And stupid... And humiliating..."

"You talk as if you've experienced it."

"Rorschach describes things well." Daniel replied matter of factly, looking her in the eye as he gave a smile.

"I believe that..." She licked the coagulated coffee from the dip of the spoon and stood up, "Thank you for the wonderful time, Mr. Dreiberg... I really needed it."

"You're welcome to come back, if you want." He said quickly, standing up as well, "I wouldn't mind more of your company, if you have time..."

"I have all the time in the world." She took a pen from her pocket, took Daniel's hand, and wrote her home phone number down on the back of it, "Call me some time. We should have dinner or something."

Daniel nodded, smiling, "I'd love to."

It was noon. The volatile sun sat high in the sky, laughing at the carnage as solar winds blew its surface into activity, making it even brighter than usual that day. And this did not help Brygida on her way home. Some of the time she even had to close her eyes and grope along the walls for help. A couple of kind people lead her in the direction that she wanted to go, and she finally made it home. She would call Bernard later, tell him what happened. He would understand.

She really wanted her eyes back....

A couple days later, Brygida was still without her glasses. She had visited Daniel again, and he admitted that Rorschach still had her glasses. And due to the violent lifestyle he led, Daniel wasn't sure if they were still more than just a mass of broken glass and banged up metal. Brygida had thanked him and left without another word. Her mother decided that it was finally time to be motherly, and came over to her tiny apartment every morning with something that you may or may not call breakfast.

Because she was so eager to be a mother to her half blind little daughter, Brygida took it as a blessing and choked down what she thought was some kind of mix of fried jelly and raw egg... Her mother was overjoyed that she enjoyed her all-natural cooking. She had always thought that her daughter should be a vegan like she was, but she could never get her into tofu.

Nor did Brygida want to be into tofu. It was decent when the Japanese made it, but her mother made it so badly, that it was even more bland and tasteless than how it came. Equivalent to her mother's cooking: rotten tomatoes. If you left a sliced open tomato out for a day and a half and then ate it, you would swear that Brygida's mother had cooked it just a second ago.

"Why don't you come back and stay with me and your father, my love?" Her mother, Rasia, cooed, stroking her hair.

"You know that I'd rather be alone then with that loaf of a father..." Brygida would say something a lot worse, but she didn't want to upset her mother, who was stressed as it was.

"I'd much rather have you stay with us than alone though, darling..." She sighed, "You know how I worry about you and your... Well, you were always such a sensitive child."

"I'm not a child anymore, mother." She replied with spite, "And even though I am still a little bit afraid of the dark, I'm very happy here... The people are kind and the land lady gave me a break in paying the rent early."

"Than at least let me loan you some money. You look half starved to death."

"Really mother? In case you haven't noticed I'm actually still a little fatty."

She gasped, "Don't you ever talk about yourself like that! You are not fat! You are a beautiful young woman with aspiration and a wonderful mind!"

Brygida let her head fall into her arms on the table she sat at and groaned, "I never said that I was or wasn't any of that..."

Rasia stood up from the table and kissed her daughter's forehead, "Remember that you can call me for anything that you need, peach. Have a good time at work today."

"I will. Bye momma."

"Bye sweetheart!" She blew a last kiss and closed the door.

Brygida quickly ran to her ratty couch and threw herself onto it, snuggling into it and soon falling asleep. She didn't want to tell her mom that she had taken a couple of days off of work. Rasia would insist that she gave her daughter money, but money was never the issue. She didn't want her mother's money; it made her feel like a child.

She just thanked God that Bernard was a nice person...


	4. Dreams That Lie To You

_Damn glasses. Must find girl. Get rid of them. Feel just as fragile as they are. Don't like it. Bad fight. Calf wound. Glass bottle. Dangerous and delicate. Terrible substance._

So Rorschach's thought process went as he sewed up his wound at his apartment. His landlady had long since been concerned about the trails of blood, the late night outings and the smell that came from his room. He had nothing to worry about. The glasses and his trench coat sat together on his bed stand, and glasses still intact other than the initial crack. He still couldn't track the girl. She was either a hermit or a ninja.

He doubted the latter. So he assumed that she hadn't been out of her house in a while. When Walter had asked the newsvendor where she lived, the old man laughed, winked at him, and said that he wasn't the only one who had asked where she was. Apparently there was some guy named Parker who had asked where she lived and why she wasn't there too. Strange person.

After wrapping up the wound, Rorschach absentmindedly put the scalpel, extra sutures, and surgical needle into his trenchcoat pocket. He stood up and put his foot on the ground. The shallow wound hurt less than he had expected upon seeing the plethora of dried and coagulated blood on the side of his calf.

He looked out his tiny window and saw the pleasantly blank brick wall. He had finally remembered to tear down that poster.

Walking out the door, he limped ever so slightly, making his way out of the horrid building slower than his usual 4 or 5 seconds interval. He preferred to be out on the streets. They were his real home, since home is, as they say, where the heart is. And his heart was long torn from his chest and staked to the middle of that wretched city.

Brygida woke up. It was 10 PM. She got up and thought to herself...

'_I missed my voice lesson...'_ She went over to her pitiful excuse for a phone and looked at the answering machine.

No calls...

Strange...

She picked up her bag, threw on a heavy coat and walked out the door. Without wasting any time, the girl hastened to her vocal studio, which was thankfully close to her apartment.

As she walked into the building, she heard Mozart's Sull' Aria coming from inside.

She loved that piece.

She walked in and said hello to the receptionist, but the usually chipper and kind woman was oddly melancholy that night, and didn't lift her head to return the greeting. Brygida blinked and kept walking. She went to the room where she heard the Sull' Aria coming from, and gently opened the door. The voices suddenly stopped. She opened the door fully and saw everyone staring at her with wide eyes and slightly open lips. The two singers, her friends Jane and Michelle, turned away.

"What's going on...?" She asked tentatively, feeling her stomach tighten into a knot.

Jane walked up to her and put her hand on her shoulder, "Bridget, I think you should—"

The door slammed open.

"Didn't you get my message?" Said the overbearing, heavy-set, terrifying artistic director of the New York Vocal Training and Performance Center, Anja. Pronounced "Ahn-Yaa".

"I didn't..." She was very confused.

Anja sighed, taking the girl by the shoulders and walking her out of the room with the rest of the girls.

"Brygida..." She said with her big, Russian accent, "We have to let you go as a student here."

Brygida stood there for a moment... She didn't quite understand if this was a joke or not, and if it was, it was not funny at all...

"I'm... sorry? I don't..."

"You're just not good enough, darling. We don't see you going any further than how you are. You must go now. The girls are upset by your presence here."

Brygida stood there, her eyes slack, her lips closed, taking it all in as she—

"You're a horrible person, you know that??" She cried, pushing past her, "I'm a _great_ singer. I'll get into the Met Opera without you and your horrible breath and your fatness and your disgusting, cold, 15 day old coffee!!"

She slammed the door.

Walked to the curb.

And cried.

'_What am I supposed to do now...?'_ She thought, miserable and still halfway in shock as she hyperventilated.

'_My dreams, my career, my love... All of it gone, because she gave up on me... Because she didn't think I was good enough... She didn't even let me give up on MYSELF. She did it for me! That horrible old woman, I should burn down her school, tear out her innards and feed them to her, stab her eyes out with her own conductors wand—'_

She felt something snap inside of her. The tears suddenly stopped and she stood up, a blank slate. She started to walk down the street, her slow gait, a disparaging walk, like that of a young person walking to the concrete wall where they would be shot down by a firing squad.

She spotted a young mother on the corner, rubbing her little boy's arms for warmth. Neither of them had a coat or anything even remotely warm on. She walked up to them, and they looked at her, confused.

Brygida took off her jacket and the sweater underneath and left the pieces of clothing at the mother's feet.

After a moment of stunned and confused silence, the woman called after Brygida, "God bless you!"

'_What God...?'_ She wondered, continuing to walk. She didn't know in what direction she was walking in, nor did she care. Her life was gone. She had nothing to look forward to in life. What was left...?

A terrible apartment.

Life as a newsvendor.

That creepy man named Parker...

'_Speak of the devil...'_ She thought bitterly as Parker Jones, a 42 year old man, balding, unhappily married, rounded the corner, and stopped, falsely flabbergasted by her being there.

"Bridget!" He said, fondly and familiarly, "How good it is to see you here!"

"Wish I could say the same." She replied, and kept walking. She knew that all he wanted was pity sex. And he thought that his good friend Bernard would help get him in with her, but Bernard was smarter than that, and warned her early on.

Parker thought he was smart. He was an old guy, so he couldn't directly approach young women without being considered a creepy pedophile. So he thought, "Oh look, I have an older friend who is friends with the girl. I'll get in through him!"

Except not really.

"Oh please don't be like that." He cooed, walking next to her, "I just got in a fight with my wife. Mind if I talk to you?"

"Yes. Go away."

"Aww... But I'd really like to—"

She suddenly turned to him, stopping him in his tracks as he saw in her eyes a hatred that no words could even describe. A hatred that only the devil himself has ever felt for the God that flung him down into Hell. A hatred that terrified Parker Jones. A hatred that made Parker Jones almost piss himself.

He waddled off.

Brygida kept walking.

And walking.

And walking.

Until she felt like she needed to go faster. Go faster, she thought, and maybe the hurt would disappear faster, would leave her alone.

So she started to run. She wouldn't need her eyesight. The wind blurred her eyes with tears anyway.

She ran faster.

Further away from that lie. Anja told her that she would be amazing. She told her that she would be fantastic. She told her that she would get into the Metropolitan Opera with her help.

But lies are easily believed by people who want to believe that they will become a reality.

'_Even with my glasses...'_ Brygida thought, her heel cracking on the cement as she toppled over, _'I was blind to everything... Nothing makes sense anymore. I'm... I'm unhappy...'_

She stood up, took off her heels, and kept running, despite the twisted ankle and skinned knee, she ran on adrenaline, on loss, on disbelief. No one was out at the time, but she could feel people watching from windows, probably thinking to themselves that they had a new crazy person on the block. Some girl, crying and bleeding, running down the street in a tank top and some jean shorts in just above freezing temperature.

No one knew who she was.

Central Park came into view in all its barren, cold, icy glory. Most of the leaves were gone from the trees. The only green that she saw was in the murky water. Sitting on the bridge and staring down into the lake, she saw a person that she had never seen before.

... Or maybe it was just the water.

"_Suicide?"_

Brygida laughed despite herself, "What a stupid thing to think about..." She turned, "You have my glasses, don't you?"

Rorschach stood there, almost condescendingly so, as he stared down at Brygida, his hands in his pockets. He drew one hand out, a pair of glasses in his hand. Something clinked to the floor beneath him, but neither of them paid it any mind as Brygida took her glasses and smiled for the first time that night, "Thank you..."

"_Welcome."_

She put her glasses on and got off of the ledge and knelt down to pick up what he had dropped...

And immediately recoiled.

"Why... did you have a scalpel in your pocket...?" She asked, her pupils shrinking as her hands started to shake.

"_Was cut. Had to take care of it."_ He replied, either not noticing Brygida's obvious terror or not caring.

"O-oh... Must have been painful... Can you put it away please...?" She asked, turning away from the surgical knife.

Rorschach picked up the scalpel and shoved it back into his pocket, _"Afraid of knives? Didn't seem too afraid when mugger attacked you."_

"I... had a bad experience when I was younger, with a scalpel..." She explained, "I woke up in the middle of surgery... And the drugs had paralyzed me, but hadn't numbed me. I couldn't scream, I couldn't move, I could barely think... I felt the entire procedure..."

Rorschach stayed silent.

"When I got back to my room, they drugged me up again, and I was out... But the only thing I dreamt about was what happened. I woke up screaming. They said that I was incoherent. That I was still on the drugs. That I didn't actually wake up during the surgery, and I had just had a nightmare." She stared out into the lake, "The hospital was just trying to not get sued... And my family isn't rich. We couldn't handle trying to sue them for malpractice; doctors have too many connections, too much safety..." She chuckled, "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I'm sure you have other places to be. People to save and whatnot."

"_Who was the surgeon?"_

"What?"

"_Surgeon who did your surgery. Who?"_

"Oh... Um... Dr. Marcus at the New York City hospital... And the attendants I don't remember. Why--?"

But he was gone before she turned around. Sighing, Brygida started home...


	5. The Ups and Down

I saw the Watchmen movie yesterday. And though it didn't live up to the comic books, I wasn't expecting it to, it was pretty good. Though, I am personally going to stick to how the story goes in the comic books rather than go to the movie for source material.

And thank you so much to all of my reviewers, you guys are all so wonderful! I'm so glad that you like what I'm working on. It's been a long time since I've seriously written, and I'm glad that it's good enough for all of you.

Again, if you see anything completely terrible, tell me please!

Thank you again!

"**In later news, the body of doctor Alan Maria Marcus was found beaten to death, his body in a trashcan. Police are unsure of who was behind this crime. And whoever did it, doesn't seem to have any traceable motive. Was this a hate crime? A political move? More on it at 11."**

Brygida watched the news with her hands at her mouth. It had been two days since that night. It was October 10th, 1985. And she couldn't help but wonder if he actually cared about her and her trauma, or if he wanted to get rid of someone who had become famous for his malpractice trials, and always won.

That day, she slipped out of her house and decided to meet Marja at the café where she and Laurie had been meeting. The little moon-faced blond girl bounced into the café minutes after Brygida walked in.

"How are you, darling?" Marja asked, ordering a vanilla chai tea.

"I'm alright... Been a little confused lately, but I'm okay..." She smiled, "You saw the news this morning, right?"

"Of course! I can't believe that the surgeon that fucked you up so bad is _dead_ now." She put her hand on Brygida's, "Are you alright with that...? I mean, you never got to yell at him like you had been talking about for so long... And, his sudden, unexpected death isn't the best kind of closure..."

"Yeah... I'm alright..." Brygida whispered, taking a sip of her black coffee and staring out the window.

Marja frowned, "You're not telling me something. What's going on, baby?"

Brygida glanced at Marja, "I think I know who killed him..."

Marja nearly jumped. She scooted her chair closer to her friend, "Do tell do tell!"

"You know about the masked 'vigilante' Rorschach, right?"

"Mm-hm..."

"I'm pretty sure he killed him."

She blinked, "But... why?"

"I'm not quite sure... I ran into him a couple of days ago, he had a scalpel in his pocket and I regressed a little... Told him about what happened. Two days later, the old bastard's dead."

"You're so lucky!" Marja squealed, "Rorschach is a freaking hottie, I love him. He's the subject of most of my sexual fantasies." She giggled, biting her lip.

Brygida's jaw slackened, "Are you insane? He's terrifying! I mean, sure, he's kind of cool, but all in all, I really would not want to be around him for a prolonged period of time. He scares the crap out of me. I wish he would just stick to following the rules. He should join the police force or something. At least then it would be legal."

Marja stared at her friend with wide eyes, "Baby doll... Are you serious? He's the reason there's less crime on the streets, not the damn police force. He's amazing."

"He kills people without restraint, Marja. What if Dr. Marcus had a wife and kids? People who were depending on him? There's a reason behind everything, and if I had to deal with a little trauma for the rest of my life, I wouldn't mind as long as those kids grew up in a good environment and learned how to be better people than their father."

Marja sighed, "But at the same time, he gets rid of so much scum. There are so many people who just shouldn't be on the streets, or even in jail, and he takes care of them... Can't you come out of your shell and see that at least a little bit?"

Brygida looked out the window and sipped her coffee again, "I don't know..."

There wasn't much talking for the rest of the trip. Marja attempted to get a couple of conversations going, but Brygida was too out of it to really make an effort to listen and respond. After a half an hour, Marja gave up, hugged her friend, and left.

'_I still told him one of my most personal secrets...'_ She thought, sipping her black coffee, _'Moment of weakness or not, he knows... And I don't know if that's good or not. He killed someone because of it... Maybe. It might not have been him... Ha. If I were into wishful thinking I would believe that...'_

She paid for her coffee and left to go to work for the first time in ages. Parker Jones didn't show up that day, and she was glad. It was a complete cliché to have a stalker anyway, and it wasn't Brygida's thing to be cliché. Why be afraid of someone who's too afraid to face you? The whole idea of being afraid a stalker is bull anyway, unless said stalker was 7 feet tall with a bad temper and a history of beating their stalk-ee's to death.

And she was suddenly reminded of Rorschach.

He was such an interesting person. She wanted to pick through his brain, see what happened to him to make him the way he was now. What did he look like under the mask? While reading another installment of _Superman_, she daydreamed about what he looked like.

She didn't know exactly how tall he was, but she knew he was taller than she. He was always looking down on her. In all meanings of the saying. She guessed that he had light brown eyes, probably dark brown or black hair. Strong jaw, tired eyelids, intense gaze, perhaps he scowled a lot. She smiled to herself, imagining such a person walking down the street and then upon hearing a woman scream, ducking into a phone booth and coming out with his hands on his hips and a tattered cloak waving in the breeze behind him.

Rorschach, superhero extraordinaire!

She chuckled to herself, adjusting her glasses with the cracked lens and turning the page of the comic book.

"Newspaper?" Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned, lowering her glasses to the end of her nose and staring at the new comer.

His sign blocked the sun.

"Oh of course." She bent over the chair in front of the cart and pulled a _New Frontiersman_. She handed it to him with a smile, "Has the world ended yet?"

The red haired man looked at her like no one had ever asked him that. And maybe no one had asked if the world had already ended. Maybe people had only asked when the world was ending, or how the end of the world was going. But never "has it ended already".

"Maybe." He replied, nodding a goodbye as he walked off.

Brygida felt goose pimples raise on her arms. She rubbed them as she felt her teeth begin to tremble. Since she had given her warmest clothing to the young mother and her son, she didn't have much warm clothing. And the cold was beginning to get to her as the warmth of the coffee disappeared from her system.

Bernard came up behind her and draped a blanket around her shoulders, "Don't freeze, crazy girl. What happened to your coat anyway?"

"... Lost it..." She mumbled into the blanket, snuggling I and continuing to read her comic book...

October 12th, 1985.

The beginning of the end.

The Comedian is dead.

No one laughed.

The public was none the wiser as they went on with their daily lives, still blind to the world with their ignorance that survives the test of time.

Only Jon knew, but he would never tell. The ability to do so was never his anyway. At the same moment in his time, he sees Laurie kissing him, leaving him, loving him, and what can he do? Nothing.

Brygida spent her ignorance in bliss, reading comic books and drinking coffee and hot chocolate. She hadn't seen Rorschach in a while, so she had to assume that he had forgotten about her. Perhaps she had to be in some kind of trouble for him to notice her.

Maybe she should run down the street naked again.

Laughing at herself, she sipped her hot cocoa and started to read the new comic, _Tales of The Black Freighter._ It was quite a terrifying comic book, and the protagonist was no Superman. The helpless survivor of a destroyed ship, the captain seemed less than thrilled with his situation. It was certainly melodramatic, but not without reason. Chewing her knuckle, Brygida lost herself within the comic, not noticing when the sun was suddenly blotted out by some UWO, an Unidentified Walking Object.

"Brygida." Spoke the headstrong, high pitched, blond girl named Marja, "I think you need to stop moping and start having fun."

"Who says I'm moping?" Brygida hummed through her hot chocolate.

"No one has to _say it_, I can _see it._" She replied brusquely.

"Ah, I see..." Taking a last sip of her hot chocolate, Brygida licked it from her top lip and then wiped the remainder off on the back of her hand, "So, what do you suggest I do about this moping?"

"Take a day off, baby cakes..." Marja smiled, "Go do something that you love. Something to de-stress. I think you've had too much Rorschach in your life lately."

"I haven't seen him for a couple of days..." She replied, returning her eyes to the comic book. Brygida was the kind of person who avoided subjects that she didn't want to have anything to do with. And she didn't want to show Marja that she did, actually, want to see him again... He was interesting to her. Like a screwed up comic book character.

"Most of us have _never_ seen him, dear." Marja said, smiling a toothy smile.

And Brygida picked up some hostility.

"You've never seen him?" She asked, taking another sip of hot chocolate and looking at her friend with slackened, unamused eyes, "In all seriousness Marja, just go out walking at night. This damn city is crawling with people who'd probably want a go at spreading your leg—"

"That's disgusting!!" She shrieked, "How could you even say that to me?!"

"That's how I met him. I don't know what happened to the man, but Rorschach..." She paused. Did he really save her? She knew that he had knocked her out, and she hadn't seen the man who had attacked her since then, but was he really necessary...?

She continued, "Anyway, I met him by accidently putting myself in danger. If you're _intentionally_ putting yourself in danger, he may or may not come. I don't know. You're young. You'll meet your boy one day."

Marja shook her head in disbelief, "I think... I think I'm going to need to take a break from you, Brygida... You're draining my emotionality, here. All I'm trying to do is make you feel better, and you're shoving it back in my face..."

"Well maybe I don't need your help!" Brygida snarled. She waved a dismissive hand. "Fine, just go away. Call me when you're not on your period."

"Fine!" Marja walked off.

And after she saw her 'round the corner, Brygida wished that she hadn't said that. Marja was one of her closest friends, and losing her was like losing the ability to drink water. She would call her and apologize that night.

She spent the 13th daydreaming. Bernard was sick, but he came to work that day nonetheless. She liked that about him. He worked hard no matter what shape he was in, but she couldn't find it in herself to do the same. She was only 19. She should have time to decide whether or not she's serious about her own life.

She wondered if she really meant the things she had said about Rorschach... Was she really scared of him? No... She didn't think so anymore. Despite the killing, he was a kind person... To her, anyway. He gave her back her glasses. That was something. He saved her from that man... sort of. She had to admit, it probably did look like he was going to stab her.

Maybe he wasn't as horrible or terrifying as she had first thought...

Jane called her the next day. Her darling singing buddy Jane.

"Let's go do something" she said.

After work, Brygida met Jane at the movie theater, where they saw _Silver Bullet_, some Stephen King movie about a werewolf. The two of them laughed about how terrible it was afterwards.

"How's the vocal center?" Brygida asked as the two of them walked down the street, ice cream dripping down their fingers.

"Truth or sugar?" Jane asked, licking the melted ice cream from the base of her wrist.

"Truth."

"It's really terrible. Anja's been kicking people out left and right. Michelle and Penelope were let go just yesterday. You were just the first of many..."

Brygida frowned, "Do you have any idea why?"

Jane nodded solemnly, "I think Anja is losing her mind... We've caught her talking to herself in her study. I think she's on a mission to get her daughter into the Metropolitan Opera. She's been getting rid of all our best singers, anyway." She laughed, "I don't know if I should feel safe or be insulted."

"Hah. At least you're still there, and you can learn and get better than her daughter, and _then_ she'll kick you out."

Jane laughed, "Yeah I guess so." She looked down at her ice cream, now just a puddle of slush in the cone, "I was serious though... We really think that she's losing her mind. She's been asking stranger and stranger things of us lately. Yesterday she asked us to get her a blowtorch and some kerosene."

Brygida looked at Jane, "Did you...?"

"Are you kidding? Most of the girls in there didn't know what a blowtorch _was_ nonetheless know where to find one. Anja made us leave early because we couldn't find one for her."

Brygida laughed for the first time in ages.

She and Jane went their separate ways, promising to meet up again soon. Brygida decided to go see her old vocal training center, just to see how it was doing. Perhaps Anja got her hands on a blowtorch and was going to the houses of the girls she removed from her teaching. Brygida didn't doubt it at all.

She hummed Carmen's "Habanera" to herself as she walked to the Center. It had always been a part of her dream to do Carmen. It was wonderfully scandalous and a fantastic piece of opera. To be the famous Carmen, the girl that everyone wants, the girl that is so completely free as both a gypsy and a woman in times like those...

The Vocal Training Center was on fire.

Brygida's mouth hung open as she dropped what was left of her ice cream cone.

It was a beautiful inferno... The colors moved smoothly through the flames, red waves of water licking the building clean. She stood in awe of the fantastic beauty for a moment longer...

And then started to laugh. It was hysterical. There was just something so fantastically funny about it that she didn't even stop to think if there were people in there. The door was blocked by burning debris and the ceiling had started to cave in, but all Brygida could do was laugh until tears rolled down her cheeks. The tears reflected the red of the flames, and Brygida could feel the heat running down her cheeks as if her tears were fuel oil and they had caught fire.

And she was happy again.

It was midnight.

Rorschach stared down at the girl laughing as the building burnt down. He didn't recognize her in the violent red glow of the fire. Leaping fluidly down the building side, Rorschach stalked his prey.

'_The girl who set fire to this building will die tonight as she laughs in her own ignorance. She will die, she will die, she will die...'_ Rorschach thought, coming upon the girl who was gasping for breath as she convulsed with laugher, _'She killed people. Very bad. Will die tonight. She will die tonight and her body will burn with theirs. She will feel their pain and understand how they feel, drop into hell and drown in her own sorrows, drown in fire, drown in tears...'_

Rorschach was right behind her. She didn't notice him. He didn't recognize her.

He stood there as she calmed down, quieted her laughter to a dull chuckle, wiped her cheeks, stood up...

And turned around.

"Rorschach?" She said, a slight smile on her lips. But her smile quickly dropped when she saw his raised fist. She cried out shortly, attempting to protect herself from the punch that she was so desperately afraid of...

Rorschach stopped short. He was suddenly disgusted by his own thoughts; he felt like throwing up. To think that he was about to kill the girl that he had saved a couple of days ago, the girl whose doctor and torturer he killed.

"_Did you start the fire?"_ He asked, having a hard time lowering his fist. He had never had to put it down without punching someone first.

"No..." Brygida replied, her voice choked with high-pitched fear, "I swear to god, I found it like this..."

"_Not very convincing."_ Rorschach growled, _"Laughing hard. Happily. Why?"_

Brygida slowly lowered her arms, "I _am _happy that it's burning down." She saw his fist tighten in his glove, and quickly added, "B-but not because I did it! The woman who owned this building was my vocal teacher... And she kicked me out because... Well I'm not entirely sure, but as far as I know, she thought me a threat towards her daughter's career."

Rorschach slowly put his fist down.

She turned back around, smiling jovially, "And now it's burning! The thing that I thought I would love for all eternity spurned me, and now it's gotten it's what for.." She looked at Rorschach, eyes glistening with new, radiant tears, "How can I not be happy?"

Rorschach stared at her as she basked in the glow of the destruction, happy; not ignorant at all, just... happy. And he saw in her what he saw in the Comedian all those years ago.

Understanding and acceptance.

It wasn't that she didn't care if there were people in the building, it was that she accepted that they were dead, and there was nothing that she could do. Such is life.

And Rorschach's respect for her increased dramatically. Even a person as young as she had a better understanding of the world then even Daniel Dreiberg, an old man, who had decided that lies and ignorance was better than the truth.

Rorschach walked next to Brygida as fresh tears trickled down her cheeks, a smile on her lips and her hands clasped behind her back. She didn't look at him.

Rorschach looked at the fire, and though he didn't find the same beauty in it that Brygida did, he found it mesmerizing as well, and the two of them stared on into the fire and flames... And at that moment, theirs was a connection that no earthly being could comprehend.

"_Name?"_ Rorschach asked, his hands in his pockets and his eyes in the fire.

"Brygida." The girl answered softly.

"_Nice to meet you."_

"Nice to meet you, too."


	6. Regression

Finally got this one out!

I've been noticing more and more Rorschach x OC fics and... Tell you the truth, I'm a little terrified. I read a couple of those and wonder: Does my fic really look like that? Sound like that? I'm really hoping it doesn't.

Anyway, it should be implied that I don't own Watchmen or any of the characters, etc. etc. Please enjoy!

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"Marja I told you, I have no idea how to contact him. I'm extremely surprised that I've even seen him two or three times now, much less talked to him." Brygida said over the phone, "... No I'm not conspiring against you... No, I'm _not_ trying to destroy your dreams. Listen, do you have any idea how bad he smells? I wish that I'd dragged him back to my apartment and-- ... No not that!" She sighed, rubbing her temples, "Marja calm down... Look, I gotta go, I'll talk to you later."

Before Marja could say anything else, Brygida hung up the phone. Marja had been on her about introducing her to Rorschach for the entirety of the 15th of October. Quite frankly, even after what happened two nights before, Rorschach was kind of terrifying her. The constant flip flop of what she thought of him was getting to her, so she decided that it would be a good idea to start getting home early and staying inside. No more late night outings.

He had almost punched her. And had _actually_ hit her once. She didn't understand why she wasn't more afraid of him before.  
Probably her sick sense of fascination with the new and strange. But once it all set in, he really was quite scary.

She didn't know if she was ever going to see him again, but if she was destined or fated to meet with him again, she would want a break. She had just noticed how he smelled as she stood next to him for a prolonged period of time.

The other two times, she had been relatively close to him, he had only been there for a short amount of time, or she was upwind from him. But being next to him in front of a fire...

He smelled like bad cologne poured on a hot summer New York sidewalk. Her nose twitched as she thought about it. She really did just want to drag him to her apartment and scrub him like a rag doll until he was raw.

Though, he probably wouldn't like that much.

She shook her head and sighed, "Okay, no more freaky people in masks. Time for reality... Well, reality that_ isn't_ crazy. He probably is crazy. You'd have to be crazy to dress up like that and go out in _public_."

Brygida sat with her blanket and weak cup of coffee as she read the day's _New Frontiersman_ at the news cart. It took a particularly strong right-winged side of things, but Brygida found it very interesting the read about the things that right-winged idealists, unlike herself, wrote about.

She had always reveled in outside opinions. She had spent her life learning about things that didn't have to do with her, and it gave her a broader view of things. She believed that everyone was right in their own respect, but that gave her no grounding of her own. She didn't have many strong beliefs about things like politics or religion, because she had been taught how to see things from many different sides. Her father disliked that about her. She knew that her father loved her, but she couldn't help but see that he didn't like what her mother had taught her about the world.

'_Your fault, papa.'_ She thought, taking a sip of coffee, _'You were never there to teach me about anything, so the only person you have to blame is yourself.'_

Her father was a World War II veteran; he wasn't dragged in the Vietnam War since he was disabled. The bottom of his spine had been shattered. He refused any kind of surgery offered to him, and he was very adamant about staying in bed for the rest of his life. Apparently he had already served his time on earth and was now just waiting to die.

Which was what caused her mother's massive stress. She had to make all the money, do all the work around the house, and take care of her daughter (or, that's what she thought), all at the same time, it seemed.

Which was probably why the poor woman was so spastic. Brygida loved her mother dearly, and she had something you might call love for her father.

But nonetheless, she continued to read the wacked out stories in the _New Frontiersman._

Daniel Dreiberg was a simple man. Simple enough to walk down the streets practically unnoticed. Simple enough to let his glasses steam up when a prostitute rubbed up against him like a starved cat. And simple enough to hate himself for thinking dirty thoughts when he got home.

And unfortunately, he was also simple enough to be paranoid. For the past few nights since Rorschach had visited him with news of a Mask Killer, he had been looking over his shoulder, despite the disbelief he had for such a theory. The sudden appearances of Rorschach had also made him regress back to his younger days. Back when he and Rorschach were a team. Before Rorschach had become so terrifyingly detached from the world.

Daniel missed Rorschach the Younger. He missed his old partner. His old friend.

Wiping off his glasses, Daniel sat in front of his TV and stared, his mind placing pictures onto the blank screen as it replayed his old days as a crime fighter.

He remembered the day that Rorschach returned from the case he had been investigating about the little girl's kidnapping. He gait was quicker. He didn't stop to say hello that day. He was completely unreachable, even though his partner was running after him and yelling like crazy.

That was also the first time he had ever seen Rorschach kill someone.

"_Rorschach!!" Nite Owl yelled, his voice becoming hoarse. But Rorschach didn't stop. It looked like he would never stop. He was now a man on a mission. What his mission was, Daniel didn't know. But he was worried._

_It was midnight. But there were still people on the streets, still teenagers making out in the corners. But Rorschach didn't stop to tell them to get home because it was dangerous. So Dan did that part._

_Some kids were running in the streets in front of their apartment, waving around sticks like swords and yelling and pretending to be soldiers in the army. Rorschach didn't bother to shoo them inside, even though he always had a soft spot for kids. So Dan did that too._

_Finally, Rorschach stopped, and Dan stopped next to him, out of breath, his throat aching. He put his hand on Rorschach's shoulder, "What's gotten into you, man...?"_

_The man with the fedora didn't answer for a couple of seconds. He stood there, silent, not looking at Daniel, not really _looking at_ anything. He saw through it all in that moment. Stared at the streets and saw the sewers beneath, rats gnawing on garbage. He saw through the buildings, the businessmen and their whores hard at work._

_And unfortunately, he saw through himself. He saw the horror of humanity. He saw his own darkness, his flaws, and he didn't look away. Behind him, Daniel lifted up his goggles, his eyes sympathetic and worryful. Rorschach didn't dare look back. Though aware of his own ignorance and inner shadows, he didn't want to have to see Daniel in such a light._

"_What's gotten into me, Daniel...?" He started, pausing slightly, trying to find the right word, "... Truth." He continued walking, a confused and very worried Daniel Dreiberg following after him. The night screamed in it's silent agony as the jaded Rorschach took his throne at the very bottom of the food chain, staring up into the throngs of people floating around in pools of denial, lust and greed . The Cheshire Cat smile moon grinned sardonically, shining her light on the one thing that Daniel did not want to see:_

_Some poor guy getting mugged._

_Rorschach wasted no time, left no limb unsnapped, and only when he was completely satisfied that the man was on the brink of death did he kill him._

_And Daniel was horrified._

_Rorschach walked away, unfazed, not bothered at all by what he had just done. Daniel stared at the body that used to have a life. He saw in the body the deterioration of the world, of humans, of life. But he shut it out. He didn't believe it. He followed after Rorschach without another word._

There was a knock on the door.

Daniel started from his daydreaming and stood up, brushing off the dust that he imagined collected on his being whilst in his morbid fairy tale land. He straightened his glasses and went to open the new lock to his door that he hadn't quite gotten accustomed to yet. A pair of glasses stared back at him once he finally got the door open. He smiled, surprised and charmed, "I didn't think you would actually think about coming back to my house."

Brygida smiled, "You said that you were lonely... And I need a better cup of coffee than that weak stuff at my job, anyway. May I come in?"

"O-Of course!" Daniel let the girl in, locking the door behind him.

The conversation started with the typical "How are you"s and tales of old times, or in Daniel's case, the less superhero involved tales of old.

As he looked at the girl talking, he couldn't help but notice her lips that were just ever so slightly off center. It was interesting. Not very pretty, but interesting. As she continued to talk, Daniel somehow found more and more things that disproved his theory of her being a good-looking girl. And he came to the conclusion that she really was not all that beautiful. Since he had met with Laurie on the 13th, he had been thinking more and more about women, in general. Laurie was beautiful. Brygida just didn't measure up.

He smiled and nodded as she continued to talk about the subject that he had brought up. She had a very soothing voice, though. Laurie's pierced, and he liked that because she was a very piercing person, but Brygida's just lulled you to sleep, into a feeling of comfort.

She noticed Dan's eyelids fluttering.

"I'm not boring you, am I...?" She asked, taking a nervous sip of coffee.

"No! No, not at all." Dan smiled again, "You have a nice voice. The kind that mother's go for when they're trying to get their kids to sleep. It's cute."

Brygida frowned, "I don't really like being called cute..."

Dan put his hands up, playfully defensive, "I'm sorry, I will never call you cute again. Noted."

Brygida laughed a little, and eyed a box of cookies on his counter, "Do you think I could, perhaps... Partake in the consumption of your cookies?" She bit her lip in the fabricated anticipation.

"Go ahead. I was conned into buying them from a little 4 year old Girl Scout and her mother." He replied.

Brygida relished the sweetness of the cookies like she did the air she breathed. With limited personal funds, she could only buy a minimal variety of food. Sure, she got in all the basic food needs and whatnot, but a cookie every now and again practically saved her life.

After a lighter conversation, Brygida stood up and thanked Daniel numerous times for the food and company. Daniel said that he was only too happy to have her by.

He didn't invite her to come again.

But she didn't seem to notice as she smiled and waved, leaving his house around 7 in the evening.

Daniel really did find her interesting. But he didn't find her attractive. She was a good friend, but she looked so much better when she was distraught, in trouble, hurt... She looked better as a victim.

He shook his head. Strange thinking for someone who was supposed to be around in order for people like her to never have to look like that. He guessed that some people just looked better when they were disheveled and helpless.

Brygida didn't meet Rorschach on the way home. When she opened the door to her apartment, she felt accomplished. Successfully getting home without something horrible or ridiculous happening was now a goal for her. She put her keys and other items on the couch and sat down next to them, turning on the 12-inch television and watching Bugs Bunny hop around the screen, Daffy Duck yelling G-Rated profanity at the gray bunny. She laughed, munching on another cookie. Daniel had given her the entire bag. Out of pity?

Maybe. But she didn't mind being pitied every now and again if it meant cookies. Snuggling into the fluffy blankets that her mom had knitted for her when she was a bit younger, she yawned and stretched all her limbs out, like a clumsy cat. She fell asleep early that night, around 9 at night.

Outside her window, across the street, just a little bit to the left, an older man lost control of his wheelchair, thanks to his niece-by-marriage. She was a conniving girl. She had been planning to kill him ever since he had started talking about suicide and who he was going to give his money to after he died. Poor old veteran.

She watched as a taxi rounded the corner, a smile on her face as she crossed her arms and watched the old man's wheelchair stop just in time to see the taxi...

But the man and the wheel chair were taken calmly from the road by a man in a mask as the taxi ambled by at an easy pace of 21 miles per hour. The man turned around to look at the girl, who was completely horrified at the turn of events. Rorschach, sick to his stomach, walked across the road. The girl was frozen. Rorschach walked behind her as she found her voice and begged him not to hurt her, as she bruised easily.

The masked man almost laughed as he kicked the girl's knees out from under her, her face smashing into the concrete. The man in the wheelchair across the street was in a coughing fit. He didn't pay any attention to what Rorschach was doing to his niece.

She was dead within seconds.

The old man re-crossed the street and stared at the young girl's body. He spat on it. Her side of the family was always so terrible.

Rorschach began to walk away.

The old man yelled after him, "God bless you!" Strange thing to say.

"_What god?"_ Rorschach replied, and he walked away.

The old man laughed, taking out an alcohol flask and giving Rorschach a salute, "Ain't that the truth." He took a long swig and sighed happily.

He wheeled himself off another block, into his apartment building. The night was still young. He thought about calling over some friends and a hooker or two... But then thought about his near death experience.

One friend and four hookers would be much better. Life was short, might as well live it up.


	7. The Everlasting Present

I've been really thinking this story over, and I've come to the conclusion that Brygida and Rorschach cannot get together. I've been planning things out lately, and this story is NOT a romance.

It's more of a... prequel. But don't let that get you down; there's still going to be tons... Well. Maybe not _tons_, of interaction between them. There has to be some type of character development, no?

Rorschach is a VERY difficult character, and if I can help it, I'm going to drag this out for as long as I can. Don't worry, I do actually have a plan! Oh my god, a fan fiction writer, planning things out. Blasphemy, I know. But I promise, fangirls, you will have your moments. Metaphor buffs, I think you'll have more moments than the fangirls.

Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

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The 16th of October was a rainy day. People tended to come together in rain, like single drops pooling into dark and dirty crevices, taking solace in the fact that they really weren't alone in the world. Jane and Michelle came to Brygida that day. They told her that Anja was in the hospital with second degree burns and third degree insanity.

The operatic basis of their generation was lost. Michelle wanted the three of them to meet with her older brother later. He was the lead vocalist in his up-and-coming metal band, but he admitted to his little sister that there was something missing. Jane and Brygida being the musically gifted people they were, were glad to meet with him and try to help with such a malady. All three of them were musically starved.

The man with the sign came by while Jane and Michelle were talking to Brygida. The two of them glanced up as he walked up behind Brygida as he always did. It had become fairly routine for the two of them:

Tap on the shoulder.

Newspaper.

Small talk.

Gone.

But Michelle and Jane didn't know that. Jane whispered in Brygida's ear, "There's some crazy looking guy coming up behind you. You want my pepper spray?"

Brygida raised an eyebrow and turned around, a smile on her face once she saw her daily 'buddy' of sorts, sign on his shoulder and that odd, scratchy looking green jacket, "Hello sir. The usual?"

He nodded, and Jane and Michelle were a bit taken aback. They both came from fairly wealthy families, and though they weren't high and mighty enough to look down on people who weren't as well off as they, but they still avoided people who looked like hobos. Jane in particular watched in slight disgust,; her sister had previously been sexually assaulted by a homeless person.

Brygida and the man with no name talked for a few moments about recent stuff in the media, the end of the world, and the like, and then he left. She turned back around in her seat, "Sorry, He's kind of a regular here. Strange person. But, you know, crazy people say the best things." She smiled sincerely. Some of the things that the nameless sign holding man said were just... Brilliant. And she was glad that she picked up on the brilliance of some of the things that he said, because most people would write them off as incessant rambling.

"Darling..." Jane said, her term of endearment striking an off note with Brygida, "Do you really sit here every day, talking to those... people?"

"What's wrong with those _people_?" Brygida replied sourly.

"Don't you feel kind of dirty when you talk to them?" Jane looked very uncomfortable, "I mean... He looks and _smells_ like he hasn't had a shower since '75..."

"Jane, _darling_, I know that your sister had a hard time with some homeless guy." Brygida replied, crossing her arms and rocking back in her chair, "But you can't attach such a shit stereotype to people. It's just not _done_."

Jane looked away from Brygida, "I just can't imagine being friends with one of them..."

Brygida rolled her eyes and grabbed another comic book, "Then don't be. It's completely up to you."

Jane sighed, putting her hand on Brygida's head, "I'm sorry, I've upset you. I won't bring it up again."

Brygida looked at Jane's smiling, kind, wonderful face and couldn't help but smile a little back. She was such an infectious person. If she was happy, then people within a 12-mile radius were happy with her. Visa versa, etc. She seemed sad today, though. Perhaps she brought the weather down with her? The two of them soon left, slightly perturbed by Brygida's capricious behavior.

Bernard put the flap of the news cart down, successfully stealing another portion of the sidewalk from the rain. In return, the rain beat down harder, angrier. Brygida was cold. She flipped the blanket over her head and blew warm air into her hands. Her coffee was cold. She refused to drink what was left of it, as it made her feel old and disgusting: like her old teacher.

"You know..." She said to Bernard as they hid from the rain together, "I really did want to go to college."

"I thought you didn't go to college in order to become an opera singer." The old man's teeth chattered as he spoke.

"Anja talked me out of it... Don't get me wrong, I love opera, I still do. But it's gone now... And... I _really_ wanted to major in Literature. Read as many books as I could and find hidden meanings to everything. The words behind what was written, the poetry inside of Hemmingway, the simplicity that Bly offers in his ridiculous poetry..." She blinked slowly, sadly, "I wanted to be left alone to my books... But when Anja came to me, she won me over with her grandeur and I was left in awe of her presence and her flattery after I sang at a High school talent show. Which I didn't win, by the way. I think the last book that I read was All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque... I think that was the last serious book that I read. I really miss it, Bernard..."

The man patted her on the back, "I'm sure that you'll be able to go to college sooner or later, missy. There are community colleges and special programs... You'll make it one day. Even if that day doesn't come for a long time. You'll make it..."

But she wasn't very sure of that. She was given chances in High School. Many of them. But she gave them all up for the opera. And now, even though she knew that she had a great voice, what's it good for when there's no one there to hear you sing?

Laurie called her that evening. She had been so down the last time that they had talked, and now, she seemed even more so. Brygida, though caring, had started becoming less and less tolerant of Laurie and her self-inflicted drama. Brygida had to hear about it all the time, and she wondered why she didn't just leave Jon. If there was nothing there to make it wonderful, than why?

Halfway through Laurie's rant about her mother, Brygida interrupted her by replying that she had to talk to her landlady, and hung up.

... And Laurie had never felt more alone. Jon wasn't around at the moment. She didn't like looking weak in front of him, since it never seemed like he cared much. He always said that he did, but there was nothing on his face that made it seem so. So she took her time, make some popcorn, watched a movie, and cried for a bit... Until Jon came home. She greeted him with a smile. He didn't see the sadness that Laurie hid from him under her eyelashes. All he saw was a smile.

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In Vietnam, a young girl walked through the wilderness to get to her village. She held a bundle in her arms. She moved quickly; people tended to get suspicious late at night. There were still guns in Vietnam, stock piled for the long since over war, but there was still conflict among the Vietnamese, aggressors from China. And people tended to 'pray and spray' late at night.

Her bare, calloused feet moved the rest of her body carefully over unmarked graves. Her brother was there, hiding under the soil, and she believed that his soul was too afraid to be reborn; too scared that he would be brought back into another life of war, of poverty, of hatred. She felt him in the ground she walked on, the air she breathed. But she didn't want to. She wanted him to be dead.

She didn't want to have to be reminded of him everywhere that she went. She heard something in the bushes, and she started to run. Voices came from the trees, and with wide-open eyes, she leapt through the brush and into the village. Sighing, she stood up, feeling safe and at home. The voices had stopped, she didn't hear anything odd or unusual.

She could already smell the coconut oil in her mother's hair, see her father moving his large body across the grass hut, touch her sister's wooden doll—

A bullet went through her head. She was down.

A couple men came from the trees, guns in hand, dressed in stolen American uniforms, dyed black with berry juice. They kicked the bundle from the girl's limp hand, moved back, and shot it.

"Not a bomb." One of the men said after the gathered up sheets hadn't exploded. The other went up to the bundle. He could see blood leaking from the hole. Faint, ragged breathing could be heard from it. The man who had approached the bundle was new to the paranoia, and the guns. During the Vietnam war and the Third Indochina war in '79, he had been with his family, in hiding. He never saw war.

The bleeding bundle horrified and sickened him.

People started to file out from their huts and stared at the girl on the floor and the bleeding clump of rolled up sheets. They all stared at the two men, eyes wide and disbelieving. The two men quickly held up their guns and pointed them at the people of the village, slowly backing away. The people stared, judging them, hating them, their face showing white against the falling twilight.

And at that moment, Brygida sat in her home, her finger on a page in a book of poetry. She read the words on the page with a steady finger and quick eyes; she always had to put her finger under the words she was reading or she would lose her place.

The poem was called **In A Station Of The Metro**. It consisted only of two lines that didn't rhyme.

_The apparition of these faces in the crowd;  
Petals on a wet, black bough._

An odd feeling crept up her spine. She felt sad, but at the same time, enlightened. Strangely enough, she felt slightly like she did when she was in front of the burning building. But while the fire was a sudden, unexplained and life-changing experience.

The poem simply... was. She stared at the lines on the page and found ghosts of the living. She saw all of her friends, her family: petals...

Sitting in the rain on a black bough. All black and white. She saw a backwards Rorschach Inkblot Test: blots of white on a black background. She wanted to look through the eyes of the alleged petals, who were surrounded by other petals, who sat on a dark branch, high above the rest of the world, either jaded or ignorant, it didn't matter. They all lived on the same dark branch.

A sound cracked the glass solitude and Brygida was awake and alert. She heard the empty, metallic sound of cans dropping on the sidewalk, and she grimaced: Street animals looking for food in the garbage. She grabbed an oddly placed fire poker in the corner and crept outside. Her landlady had given her a fire poker as an apartment-warming gift when she gave her the first check for the rent. It was odd, since she didn't have a fireplace, nor did she feel the need to poke fires with it.

She walked outside, iron bar in hand as she opened the door, rain still pounding on the roofs and the sidewalk. Some would describe the rain as cleansing, pure. But New York rain was different. Pure, maybe; but only pure enough to show the citizens the contrast between the rain and what their city had become.

Brygida stared at the trashcans, a familiar figure nearby. She hid behind the jutting walls of the apartment, hoping that he didn't see her.

Rorschach stood by the trashcan, sifting through it's contents. Brygida had only gotten a quick look at him. She had seen a spot of red on his lapel. Blood, maybe? She heard more cans clattering to the ground, a disgusting _splat_ every now and again. She stood there for a long time, too afraid to open the door again and risk him hearing her movements, maybe attacking her, maybe killing her.

So she stood there, bare footed in big, baggy pajamas that offered no help to her figure. She shivered, rubbing her arms as she attempted to stop her teeth from clacking together. She thought she sounded like a horse on concrete.

Finally, she heard the rummaging stop, and light footsteps start towards her. She pressed herself against the inner wall, perpendicular to the line that Rorschach's feet followed.

She held her breath as she saw a foot.

Dark purple pinstripe pants.

Trench coat.

Shoulder.

Mask.

Him.

Rorschach didn't see her. Hands in his pockets, he was looking straight ahead. Curious, Brygida trained her eyes onto his lapel...

It was a rose.

A single, beautiful, red rose. Her eyes widened slightly. What would Rorschach want with a rose...? It looked new, freshly cut, she imagined that he hadn't had it for long. It seemed like it almost didn't belong on his person, it contrasted so much from who she thought he was. And what he was wearing.

And then she realized.

'_Petals on a wet, black bough...' _That was Rorschach. A black petal on a black bough. Unseen, unnoticed, unwanted... But like the rest of them, he was still a petal. He was human. He had a beating heart like the rest of them. She had created him into some kind of poltergeist in her mind, but that rose made her think otherwise. Even if he did smell odd, and probably didn't like her, she didn't mind much.

Underneath it all, he really was a good person who did what he was right in order to make his way in the world.

For a moment, she didn't notice that the fire poker dropped from her hands and clattered to the floor. She soon heard footsteps returning to that spot, and ran inside.

Rorschach picked up the fire poker and stared up at the apartment.

_Fire poker. Possible murder attempt? Too afraid to go through with it. Afraid of me. Most likely, ran inside. Run down old building, good place to hide out for scum. Will investigate further. _

He dropped the fire poker in the trashcan and continued walking, pulling his collar up to the cold and rain.

The next few days were less than eventful. Brygida read comic books, drank hot chocolate, and the like. She had all but stopped drinking coffee at the time, since she really didn't need it. All the caffeine just made her feel stressed and nervous. There was a boy that showed up at the newsvendor's cart a lot nowadays, and he sat there reading the Black Freighter comics as well.

Her daily visitor came each day, the same sign on his shoulder. She found solace in the fact that some things never changed. She smiled at him more than usual. It probably weirded him out, but she didn't care. The world needed more smiles, anyway.

On the night of the 19th of October, Brygida's phone rang twice before she picked it up, in the midst of watching a documentary on the Salem Witch Trials.

"Hello?" She answered, shuddering as a chill ran up her spine. She bit her knuckle.

"_Bridget..."_ It was Laurie. _"I need a place to stay tonight...I got in a fight with Jon, and... Please, can you help me?"_

Brygida rolled her eyes. Oh god. More of Laurie and her _incessant_ complaining. And **now** she wants a place to stay?

"I'm so sorry Laurie, I really have no room in my tiny apartment. I'll help you find a hotel for tonight, if you want." _And then you can go running back to Jon, and the cycle continues._

"_No... It's alright. I'll find somewhere... Thanks, Bridget."_

"I'm sorry again, good luck." She hung up and sighed, happy that she was finally doing something for her own sake. Laurie was a big girl, she could take care of herself. She snuggled back into her couch and flipped the TV back on, watching it until she fell asleep...

**Dr. Manhattan Leaves Earth**

The headlines of all the major newspapers the next day said the same thing. Brygida felt horrible. She had left Laurie all alone, the one time that she _really_ needed help, and now, she had no idea where she was. She had no way of contacting her.

'_But...'_ She thought, _'It was also sort of a Boy Cries Wolf type scenario...'_ She convinced herself that it couldn't have been entirely her fault, and read the article in the _New Frontiersman_. She felt a tap on her shoulder, closed the paper she was holding and handed it up to the man, "I'm sure that people have been talking about it enough that you shouldn't actually need a newspaper."

"I don't talk to people." He replied, and looked up at the stand, "I'll take a Gazette as well."

This involved her actually getting up out of her seat to get the newspaper. Standing on her toes, Brygida reach up and snatched a _New York Gazette_ from the second to the top row of magazines and newspapers. She handed it to the man and smiled, "Here you go."

He nodded, what she usually took as 'thank you', and walked away.

Grabbing another _New Frontiersman_, she flipped it open to the story of Dr. Manhattan's disappearance, and started reading...

That night, there were re-runs and analysis' done on Jon's disappearance. The news said that apparently, he had given his closest friends and ex-girlfriend Janey Slater cancer. Did Laurie have cancer? Brygida really hoped not... She had to find out where she was. She couldn't call Jon's apartment, no one would be there. Nor could she just start asking around at all the hotels and motels in the area. She wouldn't be done checking them for years.

She sighed, taking off her glasses and wiping them off with her shirt.

She turned off the TV and walked outside to sit on the steps of the apartment building to think. Maybe Rorschach would walk by again, she could ask him to find Laurie for her. She would pay him for his services... Maybe.

She sat there, tapping rhythms on her collarbones, her eyes closed, as she thought about what she would say to Laurie. Tell her the truth, possibly. She may lose one of the few people she really cared about, but at least she would be telling the truth. And if Laurie really loved her as much as she claimed, she wouldn't be mad. They would be able to finally talk instead of just complaining to each other...

She smiled, "A chance to have a real friend again..."

And of course, Rorschach never walked by. She didn't think he would. He was probably busy, anyway...

And at that moment, one faceless Rorschach was being dragged away by the police, insulted, beaten, mindless with rage, sightless with hatred. He hated himself for falling for such a simple trap, for not figuring out escape routes beforehand. Still too sloppy. Once he was in the police car, he stopped struggling. Like a wounded jaguar in a cage, he bided his time, for the moment. He would get out. That he was sure of. Not because of good behavior, either.

Really, the exact opposite.

_Never compromise, never surrender._


	8. The Many Ways to Imprison

Whoa. 16 pages. I... didn't think I could do a chapter that was more than 10. But hey, look at me now!

But yeah, this one's pretty long, I had a lot of inspiration and just rolled with it.

And, thank you to all of the amazing reviews that I've been getting. To my regulars, you know who you are, you guys are literally my driving force. If I didn't have you guys, I wouldn't be writing this nearly as well or as often! So, truly, thank you so very much.

Here's chapter 8! (We're getting closer and closer to the end of the graphic novel...)

__________________________________________________________________________________

... And the world stood still.

There was a picture in the headlines.

A name, too.

...

Brygida's mind was not capable of comprehending the large, almost bulbous, letters on the front page of the newspaper. The mug shot might as well have been hieroglyphs. The whole page seemed almost blasphemous. She stared, her hands still, lips ever so slightly parted, eyes slacked just enough. Everyone thought that she was reading.

But she was in shock.

Her eyes wouldn't move from that page for the next hour and forty-three minutes, when Bernard finally realized that she hadn't said anything. He shook her, tried to snap her out of it. There were tears like dew drops on her eyelashes, but none in her eyes. She couldn't speak. What was there to say?

Jane, Michelle and Marja had visited her that day, around noon. They had seen the headlines. Marja knew that Brygida had met Rorschach; Jane and Michelle knew about her newspaper buddy. Together, they figured out why the girl was so distraught by the news.

Rorschach, in chains at last.

The streets looked darker already.

Marja hugged Brygida to her, whispering sweet nothings into her ear, sorry that she had over reacted all that time ago, sorry that things had turned out this way. Her jealously would just have to be shoved down inside her for the time being.

Michelle reminded them in her soft, sweet, tempered voice that they were to meet her brother that day. Jane spoke to Bernard, who was fine with her leaving for a couple of hours. If Brygida had still worked at that horrid fast food place, she would've been fired ages ago anyway.

They arrived at the café, a small group of men in the corner and a variety of people spread throughout the rest of the shop. Michelle walked in first, planting a kiss on one of the men's cheeks. He stood up and hugged her, smiling. He waved to the rest of them and coaxed them over. Jane tugged on Brygida's sleeve and walked forward.

The dark haired man that had hugged Michelle smiled and came up to the three of them, extending his hand, "Hi, I'm Rowan, Michelle's brother. She's told me a lot about you guys."

Brygida was disgusted. Such _normality_. What a stand-up guy.

Jane took his hand and smiled back, "I'm afraid to say that she hasn't told us much about you. It's nice to meet you, Rowan." She glanced back at Brygida, half of a scowl on her lips. "Please, forgive my friend. She's having some hard times."

Marja introduced herself as well. She didn't sing opera, nor was she interested in helping the band with their problems. She was purely there for Brygida, and she felt proud of that fact. She was the type of person who often flattered herself over small acts of kindness.

They all sat down at the collection of tables the group had previously pushed together. Brygida sat on the side, and stared out the window, her knuckle in her teeth. Rowan whispered something in Michelle's ear, and she shook her head, glancing over at Brygida.

Jane was the most at home with Rowan and his band, as they discussed what they wanted to do with themselves. Marja sat next to Brygida, watching her chew on her knuckle as she stared out into the street.

She was waiting for the red head to come around with his sign. It made her nervous to think that he might never...

She chewed harder on her knuckle.

"Operatic... metal?" Rowan questioned as Jane brought up the idea, "Wouldn't that be kind of... Well, strange? Metal is about grit and anger, not... Well, not opera."

Jane smiled, "Wouldn't it be an interesting experiment, though? I'm not saying that you _have_ to do it... But I'm curious. And I'm sure that I'm not the only one. Besides, we could make it into a... gathering, of sorts. A protest against something. Your band would be exposed to the world, and perhaps more. And God knows that there's much to protest nowadays."

Michelle nodded, "I would love to see how it turned out..."

Rowan leaned his head back, "But what would we be protesting against? Besides, protests these days end up being massacres. I don't want to get anyone killed."

Jane shook her head, "It would be completely peaceful. No fires. No demonstration of hated. As to what we would be protesting..."

She trailed off as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Jane looked up and saw Brygida, "Darling, what are you...?"

"Rorschach." She said simply.

Rowan grimaced ever so slightly, "The vigilante guy? Didn't he just get arrested?"

Brygida nodded, "The papers say that he's going to be put on trial in about a month to see if he should be put to death or not..."

Rowan laughed, "Ha, well, serves him right."

"Shut up." Brygida snapped. Rowan looked at her, thinking her odd and slightly out of line.

She continued, "He's been patrolling on his own since '77, when the Keene Act was passed, no? Well, for the past _eight years, _he's been helping people on the streets. _Someone_ has to want to help him. And I'm sure that there are plenty of someone's like that out there. I'm positive that there would be a good turn out."

Jane nodded in agreement, "Yes, he helped my sister with the homeless man that attacked her about a month ago."

Rowan looked at his band mates, and they shrugged, "Better than what we've been doing, man."

He sighed, "Fine. But if we don't want to be arrested or incarcerated, we need to do this the _legal_ way. We need a permit, and a warrant and permission from the city and everything."

Brygida smiled for the first time that day, "I agree."

Rowan looked at her, "You know, you look a lot better when you smile than when you glare."

She jolted a little. It had been so long since someone other than her mother had complimented her. She recovered and smiled at him again, "Thank you..."

For approximately the next 8 days, the small group of people worked for their cause. Brygida went to work everyday, learning what she could about Rorschach's case and _possible_ death sentence by reading as many newspapers as she could. It scared her that someone she knew could be put to death. She hoped that he would appreciate it, if they could stop such a thing from happening. There were posters being put up for it. Most of them were torn down or graffiti'd on within days. They didn't give out their numbers or names, in case there were any "Anti-Rorschach" supporters looking for blood.

Brygida found herself working with Rowan quite a bit.

He was kind of short, a good 5'9", kind of bulky in stature. He reminded her a lot of a younger version of her father, still young and full of life. He had thick, dark brown hair and bright hazel eyes that always laughed with him.

He was just a good, no nonsense type of person. Though he could be kind of off-putting, he seemed like a nice enough guy.

On the night of the 29th of October, Brygida was holed up in her home, watching TV and zoning out. She still didn't know where Laurie was, and it was really starting to scare her. Where was her cousin? Why hadn't she called...? She couldn't have been dead; there would've been something in the obituaries... That Brygida had been checking every day. She felt horrid. Completely and utterly horrid for what she had done.

But, there was no changing it.

The phone rang.

She lunged for it and picked it up with a panting, "Laurie?"

"_Umm... Yes? I don't know. What's the right answer?"_

She rolled her eyes. Rowan. Of course. She had given him her number at the beginning of the week, and he had started calling her more frequently as of late.

"Shut up, Rowan. What do you need?"

"_Well, since tomorrow is the demonstration, I was thinking that we could go out for a good luck dinner..."_

Brygida twisted the chord of the phone around her finger, "I don't usually go out to eat. No money and whatnot. But if it's someone else's treat, than sure."

He chuckled, _"Yeah, my treat. I was hoping that it would just be the two of us, actually."_

She felt her heart sink into her stomach, "Umm... Are you sure? I mean, we've never actually done anything, just the two of us..."

"_I want to get to know you better." _He was a very straightforward person, it seemed.

Covering up the speaker, Brygida took in a deep breath and let it out. Maybe he was kidding. She had never had any amazing relationships in her life, she didn't really want to find out if this one was going to work or not.

"_Hello?"_

She uncovered the speaker, "Sure, where do you want to meet?"

"_The diner on fourteenth and seventh in 30 minutes?"_

"Sure, I'll meet you there." She hung up...

And sighed, putting her face in her hands. She _really_ didn't want to be in a relationship at the moment, but maybe he would be different...

Then again, that's what she always thought. She put on some decent clothes and threw on the jacket that Michelle had lent her. Michelle was such a sweet girl, so under spoken. Brygida couldn't help but wonder why her brother was so impulsive while she was so withdrawn.

But she didn't bother thinking about that as she walked down the street at 7:30 PM on October 29th, 1985.

Rowan was waiting outside for her. He looked... nice. Not exactly handsome, but he looked better than he usually did, less scruffy. He smiled and held out an arm; what a _gentleman._ She smiled politely and lightly put her arm in his.

The dinner was nice. They talked about a lot. She didn't tell him any 'deep dark secrets', but the conversation went by well enough. He talked a lot about his childhood. He talked about how much he hated being in the upper class; they were hated the most out of everyone. Which was why he moved out of his parents home at age 14, leaving his 9-year-old sister alone.

'_Ah, I get it now...'_ Brygida thought. Big brother wasn't there for Michelle, so she fell into conformity. This made her dislike him a little bit. But she kept on smiling and nodding, laughing when it was appropriate.

_Minnie The Moocher _by Cab Calloway started playing on the 30+-year-old Jukebox, and a group of older folks and started dancing. Rowan held out his hand, "You wanna dance?"

She actually laughed this time, "Seriously? This is such an old song, I couldn't imagine..."

He grabbed her hand and dragged her to the floor. They swung to the beat, and Brygida found herself trying to find somewhere other than into his eyes to hold her gaze. She had always thought that the spontaneity of doing such a thing would be wonderful and romantic.

It just felt awkward.

"What's wrong?" He asked, bringing her a little closer.

She bit her lip, "I just have a problem with looking people in the eye, is all... Don't take it personally."

He smiled and put his hand to her cheek, bringing her eyes to meet his. She felt violated, and forced herself to smile. As they danced, she tried her hardest to look at the bridge of his nose or just to the right of his eyes. With him, she really _did_ have a problem looking him in the eye. It wasn't that she saw anything she didn't like in his eyes. It wasn't that at all. There was just something that about him that made her _incredibly_ uncomfortable.

She just wanted the night to be over. She should never have agreed to the damn date. At least, after the protest thing, she would never have to see him again... if she could help it.

"I think you're beautiful, you know." Rowan said, brushing a lock of hair away from the cracked glasses lens.

Though her throat tightened, Brygida managed to croak out, "Thank you..."

He wasn't very good at compliments, either. You're not supposed to say, "I think blah blah blah". You're just supposed to say "You are blah blah blah", because the latter makes it seem more widely accepted. The former just makes you feel completely and utterly pitiful.

The clock soon struck midnight. Brygida felt like a backwards Cinderella, except... Well, except in a realistic situation. She didn't have glass shoes; nor did she want glass shoes. She didn't want to leave anything behind that he could find her with. She loved Michelle dearly, but her brother left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Hey, I had a great time." Rowan said, his arm hanging around her neck like a noose. She didn't like the feeling.

"Yeah..." She didn't agree with him. _She_ didn't have a great time.

"You wanna come back to my apartment or something?" He asked casually, that same, wonderful, terrible smile on his lips.

"No, sorry, I need to get back home..." She answered, unhooking his arm from her shoulder, "But I'll see you tomorrow."

"Sure." He replied. His tone was happy enough, but he had flattened his smile slightly.

'_Ha. Bastard.'_ She thought victoriously.

But the worst was soon to come. He moved in close to her, took her by the waist, once again brushed a lock of hair from her glasses; the cracked lens giving off the illusion that her eye was cracked into many segments. She felt her body freeze up.

'_No! No no, don't you _dare_ kiss me now!'_ She thought, furious and apprehensive.

She could feel his warm breath on her neck, like a warm, humid day in New York; it was horrid. She wanted nothing more than to just push him _off_ and get out of there. Was this what rape victims felt like? No, she had a choice here. Unless Rowan was planning on raping her, which she hoped he wasn't.

He moved in to kiss her, and she turned her cheek to him, his smooth, almost feminine lips _suctioning_ her cheek.

"Playing hard to get, huh?" He whispered, his voice husky and unbearably rich, "Alright, I get it. I'll see you later, then." He flashed her a knowing smirk and then walked off, hands shoved in his pockets. She walked away, rounded the corner, and gasped for air. She felt like she hadn't been able to _breath_ since she had gotten to the diner and seen him.

Keeping in mind that Rorschach was no longer there to keep rapists off of women's backs, she hurried home, keeping low. She was glad that she wasn't wearing heels; a woman's heels to a rapist were like a deer's hooves on concrete to a starving lion. She wasn't egotistical enough to think that someone would want her enough to rape her, but stranger things have been seen, and done.

She got home with minor problems; a couple of teenagers had offered her some KT-28s, or Katies as they were called by the 'cool kids'. She politely declined, but they followed her for about a block before giving up and running back to their corner, where they had another client waiting.

She slipped into her apartment, tears clinging to her eyelashes.

She picked up the newspaper from that morning and started to cry...

"Dammit Rorschach... Walter... Whoever the hell you are..." She whimpered, wiping off the tears and snot on her sleeve, "Why did you have to get caught when I actually needed you...?"

Curling up on her couch, Brygida wiped her cheeks off, trying to get the feeling of Rowan's disgustingly smooth lips off. She felt _violated, _and _wronged_, and she wished that she could just scream, and Rorschach would pop up, and he would beat Rowan into submission or something. She didn't even care if he died; Michelle probably wouldn't either. He was the one who left her alone, she would probably even _thank _Brygida for getting rid of him!

With these thoughts in mind, the girl dozed off, the image of Rorschach...

No.

Of Walter Kovacs, beating Rowan to death, all for her...

All for her...

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The 30th of October came, and Brygida was fortunate enough to be recruited by Michelle to help with decorations, while Rowan was busy with his band. She saw him stealing glances at her, but she stole them back. And after a couple instances of this, she just refused to look at him.

The entire day was spent setting up the stage, the bonfire, everything. Marja had convinced them to make a bonfire. As long as it had fencing around it.

Their chosen spot was Central Park.

Their permits were all set up, so no one was afraid of being stopped by the police. The only thing anyone _was_ afraid of, was if people would come or not. People would probably be drawn by the music, but would the cause drive them away?

A couple girls walked into the area, seeming afraid, and unsure. Brygida walked up to them, "You need something?"

"This is the Rorschach rally... right?" One of them asked in a hushed voice, as if their conversation were being tapped.

"Yes..." Brygida replied, "Are you here to support our cause or torch it?"

The girl that had first spoken shook her head, "Oh no, we're not here to _torch_ it! The three of us were out drinking one night about two years ago, and we were attacked by topknots... Rorschach saved us. And we never got the chance to thank him... So, we figured, better late than never."

Brygida broke into a smile, "So good to have you, then!"

After that, people started coming in groups, droves and flocks, all with their own reasons for supporting Rorschach. Some were attacked and saved, some were raped and avenged, and other had friends who were helped by Rorschach. It was quite a surprising outcome. Most of the people that Brygida talked to had no idea that there were so many people who supported him, and that they all disliked him because the people around them disliked him.

Around 8 at night, when the bonfire was going and people were situated enough, Brygida went to Rowan and smiled, "I guess it's time to start."

He smiled back, "I guess so." He nodded at his drummer, who swung his sticks into the air and began the count off.

"One! Two! One two three four!"

__________________________________________________________________________________

"**In other news, a group of supporters for the masked vigilante Rorschach rallied in Central Park just a few moments ago. We have been told that the figureheads for this group had claimed to have obtained permits for such a gathering, but it seems that the protest had gotten out of hand, and the police were called to detain them. A couple of our people were out there to observe the scene, and we have exclusive coverage coming straight from Central Park."**

The image switched from a man in a suit comfortably situated in a nice, warm office, to a battlefield. Police officers were beating citizens with their batons and flashlights, handcuffing people to each other and throwing them into trees. It was pure brutality.

Brygida and Marja hid underneath the stage with a couple other girls, two of whom were whimpering and crying. No one seemed to notice them under there.

"We need to get out of here..." Marja whispered to Brygida, who nodded in return.

"Please don't leave us..." The other girls whispered through tears and snot. Brygida and Marja looked at each other and sighed. Together, they snuck out from under the stage, the sounds of screaming becoming less frequent.

"Fucking cops..." Marja growled, "We had a permit and everything, and still..."

Hiding behind trees and any other somewhat large structure that they could find, the five girls slowly and carefully made their way to the lake in Central Park, far away from the chaos.

But luck wasn't on their side that night.

"Hey Jackson!" They heard coming from the brush, "We've got some stragglers."

Officer Paul Jackson wasn't a corrupt cop, not in the least. Like Hollis Mason, he was there to help people, and if he were born in the early 1900s, he would have become a masked avenger as well. Upon seeing a group of muddy, frightened, and bristling girls, he sighed.

"Walker, do we really need to take them in? Look at 'em, they look like starved alley cats..." Paul replied to his partner, Officer Walker.

Jamison Walker was _known_ for being a dirty cop. His superiors knew it, the entire city knew it, but no one could touch him because of his ties with the underground Italian mafia.

Walker grinned, "Yeah, starved for attention. Here, pussy pussy pussy..." He cooed playfully. Brygida, being the closest, took a thick branch and swung at him with it. Quickly dodging the piece of wood, Walker's mood modified to the situation. Whipping out his baton, he got her right in the head, and she was down.

"You bastard!" Marja seethed, but she didn't do anything to back it up.

"Take the one on the ground and the one with the potty mouth to Sing Sing." Walker instructed his partner, "These two match the descriptions of two of the figureheads of this little rally of sorts."

"You said that about five other girls..." Paul replied, at a complete loss.

"They deserve to meet their _hero_." Walker laughed, moving to the other three girls and corralling them into a corner.

Paul Jackson looked down at the girl, writhing in pain on the floor. She had a cut in her scalp, and was bleeding down her face. Her glasses were scrap, completely cracked and useless. He picked her up and looked at the other one, "If you don't come with me now, you'll have to deal with _him._" He nodded at Walker, who was prodding the other girls with a baton, a sick grin on his lips.

The girl nodded and followed Paul.

Inside the cop car, Marja held tightly to Brygida, not daring to touch the sliced part of her head. She was utterly terrified of blood, refusing to even look at Brygida's head as the red liquid slowly dripped down her cheek.

"I'm sorry..." The officer said in the front seat, "The department knew that the permits you had were legit... And they went against them because they didn't like what you were fighting for."

"So then why are you part of it?" Marja asked, staring at the back of the officer's head.

"It's my job. Someday, I know that things like this won't happen... But for now, it's all I can do to not be corrupted by it." He cleared his throat, "Anyway, how's your friend?"

"Still bleeding... I think it's clotting though..." Marja hadn't even looked at Brygida. Though, she was right. The blood was clotting, slowly but surely...

________________________________________________________________________________

At Sing Sing, a couple of guards chained Walter Kovacs up. They said that he was going to meet some of his supporters, show them what he _really_ was: a cold-blooded killer. He didn't respond. He had heard about the protest. Had seen some of it. The band was terrible, he didn't listen to music much. But they were loud, unorganized; painful to listen to.

He did, however, find solace in the operatic vocals. Something preserved for the higher classes, being performed in a dingy place like Central Park at 8 at night, was something to be cherished. The guards that were watching it with him laughed, making fun of him while he was chained to the chair, said that the only people who cared about him were little girls.

He didn't listen to them. He saw Brygida, he knew that it was her. But he didn't react. He knew that it was going to turn out badly; protests like that always did.

________________________________________________________________________________

Marja and Brygida were escorted into Sing Sing, and they could see that a small group of protesters had already been created within the bars of the prison. Rowan was there, the drummer was there. Both of them looked pretty badly beaten. Brygida stumbled in, her head swimming. She couldn't have seen anything to begin with since she didn't have her glasses, but the slight concussion made it even worse. Marja kept her steady, but not for long.

A guard tore them away from each other, and slapped a pair of handcuffs onto each of their wrists. It was all Brygida could do to stay standing, she was so dizzy.

________________________________________________________________________________

Walter walked down the hall, chained up, almost completely immobile. Or, at least, that's what they thought. He heard his shoes slapping the stone flooring, but it didn't register. He was in a state of complete detachment. He didn't care who he saw. He didn't care what they thought of him. It would be like a bandage: quick and painless.

________________________________________________________________________________

"We get one call, don't we?" Brygida asked one of the guards, her eyes focused down, "Please, let me call my mother, I need my spare pair of glasses, I can't see anything..."

The guard didn't reply. She lightly tapped him with her foot, "Look, I know you're not supposed to talk to us or whatever, just let me call my mom, it'll be really quick, I promise..."

Still he didn't say anything, nor did he move.

The group heard chains coming from the hallway in front of them, and they collectively shifted their gaze to the doorway.

And there he stood.

"Rorschach, man, you're the best!" Rowan hooted.

The red head looked at Rowan and didn't say anything.

One of the guards sneered, "Look Rorschach, they all _love_ you. Go on, say something to them."

Still, he didn't say anything.

"Oh right I forgot, you're too _high and mighty_ to say anything to commoners." He laughed and turned to the group, "Look at your hero! I'll bet he doesn't even care that you people did that for him. He probably hates you even more."

The other guard cleared his throat, and the talking one rolled his eyes, "And you'll all be questioned, just in case there was some sort of conspiracy going on."

Brygida pushed her way through the crowd and looked up, a blur of red and skin laced with silver shackles making her smile.

"Hi..." She said softly.

"Hello." Rorschach replied, and the officers looked at him, surprised and on their guards.

Rowan and the others looked at Brygida, just as surprised. Marja fumed; she couldn't help it, he was her hero, and here she was, watching her best friend talking to the one person that she _longed_ to be able to talk to.

One of the guards walked up to Brygida and held up his baton, "Back with the others, missy."

"Let me have my phone call, and I'll gladly get back with the others." She replied, training her focus to the ground again, feeling lost without something solid to focus on.

"You're not going to jail, so you don't get a phone call. **Back with the others.**"

"No."

And at first, she thought that she would be alright. But the sudden blow to the shoulder told her that she was wrong, and the impact of her hip on the stone floor mocked her. She gasped in pain and disorientation. When she tried to get up, a suddenly blow to the ribs had her on her belly, gasping for air, eyes darting rapidly for something to hold onto.

Rorschach watched the observers. The group of people, who had claimed to support him, who were her _friends_, were all just standing there. Some of them weren't even cuffed. None of them did anything. He looked down at the girl, and didn't see a baton coming down on her, but a butcher knife.

He heard her whimpering for her mother as he saw Blaire Roche, who must have cried out for her mother as well.

He saw Kitty Genovese in the eyes of the observers.

And he saw Brygida. A child who had gotten ahead of herself in life. And when it came to it, she was simply a little girl.

And then it occurred to him.

He couldn't have saved Blaire. He couldn't have saved Kitty.

But he could save this one.

And with a light tug, he pulled from the guards who held him. He wrapped the chain binding him around the guard's neck, threw him to the ground, and put a foot in between him shoulder blades. A couple of the guards pointed guns at him and cried, "Let him go, Rorschach!"

"Could have told him to stop hurting the girl." He replied, pulling the chains tighter. The man's face started to turn blue as Brygida crawled behind Rorschach to catch her breath.

"She was resisting, he had every right to do that." Officer Walker replied.

Paul Jackson looked at Walker. He had never liked him. Paul put his gun down and stepped away.

Walker looked at him with crazed eyes, "What are you doing, Jackson?!"

"I won't be a part of this anymore, Walker. Rorschach is right, we could have told him to stop. The girl can't see, all she wanted to do was call her mother." Paul replied.

"You've gone soft." Walker mumbled, and then turned to Rorschach, "I have no qualms with shooting you, Rorschach. Let him go."

And with that, the resounding _snap_ of the guard's neck had everyone frozen. Only Brygida's heavy breathing could be heard in the gelid silence. But soon, a plethora of guards were on top of Rorschach, holding him fast, tighter then before. They were terrified; even in chains he could kill someone. Paul Jackson took Brygida's hand and dragged her back to the group.

No one touched her.

"Put them in the holding cell." Paul mumbled to the guards.

Brygida secluded herself from the rest of them. She felt eyes warily searching her over. Even Rowan and Marja avoided her. Marja was probably mad. Mad that Brygida had come in contact with Rorschach enough that he had only addressed _her _in that crowd of people. And he saved her, too. He risked his own life for her. So Marja sat in the corner, talking to Rowan.

And Rowan... Rowan was jealous of Rorschach. Brygida _trusted_ him. He heard something in that simple "Hi" that she offered that he hadn't heard in anything that she had said to him the night previous. Why would she like someone like him, anyway? He was gross. What did he have that Rowan didn't?

People started being taken out for questioning. The officers told them that since there were so many of the protesters, they would have to hold them for an extra day or so to get through all of them.

The only reason no one made a fuss about it was because they pointed guns at them.

The next day was hellish. The pulled one person at a time, and none of them ever came back. Brygida could only assume that they were sent home, but maybe not. She, Marja and Rowan were left to the late evening, a couple of other men left with them.

"Brygida Katarzyna." Her name was finally called. She didn't look back at Rowan or Marja as she walked out of the cell.

She was placed in a painted white room with a single one-way window next to a single door.

"We'll be right with you." The policeman said gruffly, and he walked out of the room, locking the door behind him.

... But no one ever came back. The weak sound of crashing glass and bodies hitting the floor only faintly reached Brygida's ears, and she didn't register them as dangerous. It wasn't until a bullet cracked through the window and embedded itself in the wall that Brygida suddenly found herself under the table in the middle of the room, in a fetal position...

"Rorschach, where are you going? Archie's this way!" The now costumed Daniel Dreiberg cried after his friend, Laurie scoffing behind him.

Hands in his pockets, un costumed Rorschach walked down the hallway, "Need to get someone."

Laurie and Dan looked at each other, confused. Who would Rorschach want to get in a place like _this_?

Passing by the holding cell, Rorschach looked in and saw Marja and Rowan, the girl holding onto the man as she cried in fear. Upon seeing Rorschach at the bars, she sprang up, "Oh thank God! Rorschach, please help us!" She reached through the bars to touch him, but he stepped back.

"Where is she?" He asked, deadpan.

"Who? Bridget?" Marja asked, practically vomiting the name, "Why does she matter?"

Laurie's eyes widened slightly, "Bridget...? You mean my cousin?"

Marja looked at Laurie and her jaw dropped, "Laurie?! What the hell are _you_ doing here??"

Dan jolted, "Bridget's your cousin?! ... Wait. She's HERE?"

Rorschach grumbled. All these sudden realizations were straying from the point of where she actually was.

"She was brought into questioning..." Marja answered, "But please help us first!"

"No key. Can't open lock." He walked off, and Marja was floored. Her hero left her there...

Laurie looked at the girl, "We'll get some guards or something for you, promise." She and Dan quickly followed after Rorschach as Rowan comforted Marja.

The three of them came upon a room with a bullet hole in the window and a body under the table. Laurie opened the door, "Bridget?"

She was tackled to the floor, "Laurie!! Oh my god, I missed you so much, I'm so _sorry_, I was so horrible to you—"

She felt a hand on her collar as someone roughly tugged her up, "Time for sappy apologies later. Have to leave now."

She nodded to Rorschach, "Right." She smiled at him, "Thank you for finding me."

He grunted in reply.

The four of them dashed down the hallways as the riot began to simmer down to a low boil, the inmates being beaten and bloodied by batons and flashlights, shot at by guns. The four of them hid behind walls and moved as a unit, and Brygida felt completely at home. Laurie's hand was tight around her wrist, and she always moved at the slightest tug. The brown haired woman knew how blind the younger girl was without her glasses, and she spent no time trying to figure out why she was lagging behind, and instead just took the initiative.

Dan, meanwhile, was still slightly confused. Running from danger was involuntary for him, he could think of other things whilst doing so. And as he looked at Brygida, he thought about how right he was. She really did look better when she was all beaten up and frazzled. He saw how gentle yet stern Laurie was with her as they all ran back to the owl ship, and his only thought was:

'_She would make a great mother...'_

Archie was just a jump away. Laurie smiled at Brygida, "Hang on tight." She brought Brygida's arm around her neck and leapt over. The two of them jumped into the ship, hearing a heavy landing just above them as Rorschach followed. He dropped into the ship, and Brygida noticed that he didn't smell nearly as terrible as he used to. The prison had probably made him shower quite a bit.

As they drove away from the prison, the screechers in full effect, Brygida made a teary apology to Laurie for how horrible she had been, and explained how terrible she felt after she saw the news about Jon. Laurie quickly forgave her, she said that it wasn't worth it to hold stupid grudges.

"And..." She glanced over to Dan and smiled, "A lot of good came out of it, anyway..."

Brygida blinked, "You and... Dan? But..." She whispered into her ear, "He's so _pudgy._"

Laurie laughed, "It's nice to have someone so imperfect after Jon. I'd take Dan over Jon any day now, anyway... I'm happy with him."

Brygida smiled sincerely, "I'm happy for you, then..." She clutched to Laurie as if for dear life, "Why didn't you call me?"

"Tell you the truth, I was kind of mad at you, too..." She smiled wider, "I'm sorry about that, but I knew that you would forgive me, given the circumstances."

"Oh of course!" Brygida cried, "I was worried, but since things worked out alright, I don't care."

Laurie glanced over at Rorschach and Dan as Brygida clung to her. The two men were talking between themselves in hushed voices, and Laurie found that she couldn't tear her eyes away from Rorschach. He looked so different from what even she had expected...

Rorschach looked over at the two girls and caught Laurie looking at him. She gave him a light scowl before returning to stroking her little cousin's hair. Rorschach looked at Brygida. That was the widest smile she had ever worn, even though her friends at the prison might be dead. Even though she was a fugitive on the run. And Laurie, however moody she might have been before, threw it all out the window as she cooed to the girl.

Rorschach was both impressed and confused by the connection between the girl and the woman. From what he had heard, Brygida had basically put Laurie on the streets. And yet, she forgave her quickly and easily. He and Daniel had never had problems like that, but even with small problems, they had never figured them out that quickly. Daniel's feathers were all the more ruffled after they "figured out" the problem.

Brygida noticed Rorschach staring and waved, "You okay?"

His eyes trailed downward. He wasn't sure how to answer that question.

"How're you two doing back there?" Dan asked.

Brygida and Laurie smiled at each other and answered together, "**Very well.**"

Dan almost stopped flying as he heard the two of them giggle like schoolgirls and continue talking. He had never seen Laurie so happy, and it made him kind of sad that he wasn't the one to make her like that.

They arrived back at Dan's house and they all filed out of Archimedes, quickly heading inside. Dan started gathering things that they would need. Probably food, weapons, and the like. Perhaps food that could be used as a weapon. Laurie was busy with her own things. Since she had been living with Dan for a while, she explained that she had become rather messy with the room that he had lent her.

Which left Rorschach and Brygida to their own devices. Brygida sat on the couch, her knuckle in her teeth and her legs curled up to her chest. Rorschach, meanwhile, stuffed pieces of Sweet Chariot chewing sugar into his pockets.

"Why sugar?" Brygida asked, watching him.

"Sugar rush." He answered simply, turning around and leaning against the counter.

"Does that... help you beat up bad guys or something?" She asked. She noticed that his voice sounded different when he was without his mask. It was weird to her... The man with the sign that she had known for the longest time was Rorschach, and his name was Walter...

"Or something."

She smiled a little, "Jeez, it's so strange... I've known you for a longer time than I've been lead to believe... I do wish you would've told me, though. I know that if none of this happened, you wouldn't tell me, but I'd have loved to be the only one who knew."

"Important for you to know these things?"

She shrugged, "I like knowing things, yeah... I think that you're amazing, you know."

He grunted in response. She had expected that, and her smile widened. She was talking to him... She _had been_ talking to him, Rorschach, for such a long time...

"Friends are probably dead." He said after a short silence.

"Truthfully, they were never really my friends... Marja would always get mad at me for the stupidest reasons. Most recently, she'd get mad at me for knowing you. She said that you were the subject of her sexual fantasies."

He visibly grimaced, "Disgusting whore thoughts. Left her in cell for good reason."

Brygida laughed, "Well, I wouldn't call her a whore, but she's been around the block a few times too many..."

"You?"

"... Hm? Have I had sex? No, still a virgin. I'd tell you the story behind why, but—"

The doorbell rang, and the two of them were instantly up, looking for Daniel and Laurie.

They heard voices from the other room.

"Daniel? Doorbell ringing..." Rorschach tried. Brygida had never heard him _try._ He always just _did._ It was strange hearing him talking to Daniel; like there was some kind of weakness behind his words, something that had hurt him a long time ago. It was strange to hear it coming out of Rorschach's mouth; Walter's body.

"People outside, Daniel. Police." He said. Brygida could hear the doorbell stop and fists on the door start.

"We should probably go..." She whispered. She jumped when the knocking became pounding, and she hovered her hands over Rorschach's bloody arm, "Can we go now?"

The red head circled around the corner of the corridor, "Hammering now. Best hurry. We—"

There was a flash of light from the other room, and Brygida heard Dan cry out, "Laurie! Don't—" And she knew what had happened. Brygida had seen that same flash of light many a time when she was younger and Laurie and Jon used to go out together and visit her mom and her.

"Daniel, door won't hold long. Must go now before... Where is Miss Juspeczyk?"

Brygida could practically hear Daniel's tone deflate, "She won't be traveling with us... Let's go."

'_Oh no...'_ Brygida swallowed the lump in her throat. In the owl ship with only Daniel and Rorschach? She wanted Laurie, not them. They were both nice people and everything, but she felt so out of place between them. Taking a deep breath, she just stood there for a moment before she heard:

"Hurry, Bridget, we gotta go!" From Daniel, already down in the basement that they landed in.

"S-sorry!" She quickly hurried after them.

I don't own any of the text from the actual Watchmen Graphic Novel! I will be using that as sparingly as possible, anyway.

Thanks for reading, guys!


	9. Thank You

And we're getting closer and closer to the end... Oooh, scary~

Now, some people were getting on me about Brygida's apparent 'drastic change' from loving her friends, to not caring if they were alive or not. I guess I need to explain a little. I've already showed that she can make bad decisions, yes? She turned Laurie away, and then felt terrible about it for a long time.

Is it not impossible to feel good about something one day, and then feel terrible after everything goes wrong...?

And no, I have not turned her heartless, there is a point to everything that I do in this story, even the drastic age difference.

Anywho, this is the penultimate chapter, next one will be the last of this series.

Enjoy!

_________________________________________________________________________________

It had been two hours.

Two hours of _unbearable_ silence.

Brygida felt that she would go insane and start tearing her hair out if she had to endure such a silence much longer.

"So Dan..." She said. The brown haired man looked back at her, the hood of his costume hanging from his collar. She continued, "When you said that you were Rorschach's _liaison_... You meant his partner?"

Dan gave a small smile, "Yes. Sorry I didn't tell you that I was Nite Owl, but..."

She smiled back at him, "Don't worry about it, I understand..." She looked out the window of Archie and twitched with unfamiliarity as a fish swam by, "What I _don't_ understand is why we're in the fucking _ocean_ of all places. I mean, it's nice and murky, sure, but... Still very strange."

He pressed a few buttons, "It's better for Archie to be underwater than above the clouds for now; takes less energy and it's easier to explain an unidentified object underwater than it is in the sky. You don't want people adopting the 'It's a bird, it's a plane' thing with us. Because after they can't figure out what it is, next instinct is to shoot it down."

Brygida shuddered, "Point taken."

... And the silence settled again.

But after a while...

"How much longer? Tired of skulking down here. Impatient. Work to be done." Rorschach complained in his ever-present monotone.

"Rorschach, we just got you and Bridget _out_ of prison. Everybody's looking for us, and unless we _all_ want to go _back_ there, we'd better be _careful."_ Daniel replied.

"Down here hours already. Need to collect spare uniform and personal effects, so that we can proceed."

"And can I get my glasses? I still can't see a thing, and I doubt you want a blind girl on your hands right now..." Brygida chimed in.

Daniel sighed, "Alright, we'll go to Rorschach's first and then get your glasses. I'm taking her up."

"At last." Rorschach said, "It feels good to be working with you again, Daniel. Pity Miss Juspeczyk wouldn't stay with us."

"Yes. Yes, it's a pity."

Archie floated silently to the top of the wharves at the edge of the city, and Daniel opened the hatch at the top of Archie. When Brygida tried to follow them, he put a hand up to stop her, "Stay here. We don't know what may happen, and if we end up having to fight the police, you're not going to want to see it or be anywhere _near_ it."

"Oh yeah, like it'll be any better if the police find me in Nite Owl's damn hovercraft. I'd be safer with you, Dan." She shoved past him and grimaced at the smell of dead fish and dead sea, "Gross..."

Walking a good yard behind the two as they talked, Brygida took in her surroundings. She was slightly surprised; this place was only a couple blocks from her parents home. Who knew that superheroes could be so close to home, literally. It was a beaten and decrepit part of the city, the sidewalk looked like it had never been without dirty shoes. It looked like the kind of place where people went when their dreams died.

They stopped at a fire escape on the worst looking of the buildings, and Brygida climbed up after Dan and Rorschach, hearing the very end of the conversation.

"Some of us have always lived on edge, Daniel. It is possible to survive there if you observe the rules: Just hang on by fingernails..." Rorschach jumped down to the uppermost window on the right side of the building, "... And never look down."

Daniel helped Brygida swing in after Rorschach, and she tumbled in before standing up and looking around the...

Well, it wasn't much of an apartment. It looked disgusting. She could see scraps of the _New Frontiersman_ stuck in the floorboards; cracked china plates littered around the small room.

"**Oh god!"** A woman shrieked from the doorway, making Brygida jump inside her skin.

She could see the woman start to shake as she started rambling, "I—It's you... Oh god, what are you _doing_ here? I... look, please, I don't want any _trouble_, okay? I..."

"Mrs. Shairp. Long time no see." Rorschach said as he gathered his things into his arms and approached the poor woman, "Told press I'd made sexual advances on you. Not true. Very bad."

"**No!** I never _said_ that, I got _misquoted_! Oh god, please don't..."

Daniel put a hand on his shoulder, "Rorschach? Come on, man. Leave it..."

Rorschach pulled away, "Can't. Serious business. Slur on reputation. How much did they pay you to lie about me, whore?"

Brygida looked at the woman's children who were crowded about her feet, whimpering and sobbing. None of them looked alike, she figured that they all probably had different fathers.

"Oh _please_," Begged the alleged Mrs. Shairp, "Don't say _that_. Not in front of my _kids_. _Please_, they... They don't know."

And Brygida watched what she thought was impossible. The look on Rorschach's, on Walter's face, was sympathetic. Empathetic. It was a once in a lifetime, once in a millennium, opportunity to behold. But it was soon gone. He turned around, "Got what we came for. Finished here now. Let's go."

Brygida looked back at Mrs. Shairp, on the ground with her kids, crying her eyes out. She walked over to her and brushed her shoulder. The woman jolted, looking up at her with a craziness in her eyes until she saw that it was her.

"I'm sorry..." Brygida said, and then walked after the other two. Daniel took her hand and hoisted her up onto the rooftop.

"I'm not too heavy, am I?" Brygida asked, "That's not a trick question, by the way."

Daniel chuckled, "No. After all the fighting and getting Rorschach back, you're light as a feather. I could use some weight training, though. Get back to what I used to be."

Brygida smiled, but didn't say anything.

Back at Archie, she stood up in front of the ship, and pointed down the street to where her parent's building would be. Though near Rorschach's part of the city, this part was cleaner, or rather, less disgusting. Brygida's parents lived in a medium sized apartment complex in a nice room on the top floor, where her mother ran her book clubs and did her interior designing.

"Sorry that there aren't any lakes or oceans or anything that you can hide in nearby." Brygida said as she crawled in through the window.

"There doesn't seem to be anyone on the street. It's not a problem." Daniel replied as he and Rorschach followed her in.

"You guys didn't have to come." She mumbled, rolling her eyes, "Momma!! Are you here?!" She heard the dull _clink_ of a bottle on wood flooring and followed the sound into the bedroom.

And on the bed, was of course, her father. She sighed, "Hello Patrick."

He didn't respond. She heard crying and her eyes widened, "Dad? Are you okay?"

"Y-Your mother..." He said, holding out a note. She snatched it from his hand and read it allowed:

"_Brygida and Patrick:_

_I am sorry that I must leave you both now. The vibrations in this place are dark, heavy, and unhealthy. I am running away for a couple of weeks, and will be back as soon as I can collect myself again. Do not try to follow me, I need to be alone right now._

_Love you both,_

_Rasia."_

Brygida sighed and crumpled up the note, sticking it into her front pocket. Her mother was always so dramatic, she always had to do something that would make her look like a hero, or a villain. Not intentionally of course, it was just in her nature. But Brygida could practically see her writing the note, the back of her hand up to her forehead as she cried her crocodile tears.

"Mother was a hippie?" Rorschach asked.

"Still is..." Brygida replied, her voice thin and wispy. She looked at her father, "I'm sorry dad, I—"

"It's your faul' that she's gone..." Her father slurred. He was drunk beyond the point of reasoning. Tears streaked his cheeks, snot bubbled and crusted just over his upper lip. His sobs were wet and thick. Brygida found herself stepping back slightly so that she didn't have to look so closely at him. She could see all this even without her glasses, and she found it utterly disgusting.

"Dad, where are my spare glasses?"

"S'that all you came for? Your damn _glasses?_ What about me?!" He choked, "You never come to see me!"

"What was there to see, dad?! You're always in _bed_ watching the television! You never wanted to _do_ anything with me, I might's well have not even been your daughter!" Brygida replied sharply, and then regretted it when she had the misfortune of hearing him moan in pain.

"You were always so cruel to me! And now, you're going to take you glasses and leave with these..." He looked behind her and saw Rorschach and Daniel, one in costume, the other covered in blood.

He let out a scream, "Who _are_ they?! Brygida, come here, they're going to kill you!!"

Brygida reddened, "Dad, they're my friends... Leave them alone, they're not here to kill me, they're here to help me. Which is more than I can say for you."

Rorschach walked towards the bed and opened a drawer in the bed stand, all while Brygida's father was sobbingly begging him for his life. He pulled out a glasses case and looked at her, "Can leave now?"

Brygida nodded, "Yeah, let's get out of here."

They all turned to leave, and Patrick flew into a drunken rage, "You get back here, Brygida! I didn't say that you could leave!!" He chucked an empty bottle at her. It hit her in the back of the head.

"Son of a bitch--!" She sucked in air through her teeth and held the spot where it hit, "Ah, fuck, that hurt..." Rorschach was about to go back and give him what for, but Brygida told him to stop.

"Just let him drown in his own alcohol and unhappiness..." She said, looking up at him, "Please."

The red head nodded, and the three of them loaded back into Archie, listening to her father yell his apologies. Brygida sat in the corner of the owl ship, her head in between her knees, "I'm gonna be sick..."

Daniel patted her back, "I'm sorry about your parents..."

She shook her head, and then stopped, deciding against it, "He doesn't usually get like that. My mother was his anchor, I guess now that she's gone, he'll just attempt to kill himself with alcohol poisoning... I'll come back after we're done with all this craziness and set him straight."

Daniel nodded, "We're going to go back underwater, why don't you try to get some sleep?"

She sighed, "Yeah... That sounds good..."

Daniel pulled the white snow owl suit from the wall and handed it to Brygida. She laid it down in the corner and yawned, curling up and almost immediately falling asleep from complete and utter exhaustion.

Thankfully, she didn't dream. She had no out-of-body experiences, she didn't hear anything that was going on around her; she simply slept. All the bad things slowly bled their way out of her mind and her body snuggled closer into the lovely folds of warm blankets, her mind inching closer and closer to nirvana. The shifting silvers, white golds and black pearls turned the insides of her eyelids into fairy forests, endless plains of simple color, beautiful and impossible in the real world. She smelled infinity.

In her sleep, she felt a hand on her head, and she thought that perhaps she would purr and rub up against the hand, treat it like an old friend and invite it into her dreams. But it left before she could so anything, so she sank back into the light and forgot about the hand, thinking maybe there was no hand, and simply a dream come to bid her farewell.

She was suddenly jerked from the light in her head by the sound of birds cracking their beaks at each other. Yawning, she stood up and stretched, unhappy that she was greeted by the city sights in all their dingy green and matted brown glory. She looked out the window of Archie and just caught Rorschach and Daniel walking into a bar...

Two stories below where she was. Archie was apparently parked on top of a building. Brygida sighed, mussing out her wavy hair and pulling it back into a neater high ponytail before attempting to climb down the side of the building via fire escape. She succeeded, but not without scratching her knee up a little on the terrible landing. She looked both ways and hastily crossed the street, taking a deep breath before entering into the bar...

"Da- Uh, Nite Owl...?" Brygida halfway stuttered, watching the man in the owl costume ringing another guy's neck.

"_Not in front of civilians. We have the knowledge that we wanted..."_ Rorschach said calmly, suddenly in costume.

"Yeah. And then some. Let's get the hell out of here." Daniel growled. He looped his arm around Brygida's shoulder, "Sorry you had to see that..."

"S'fine..." She replied, slightly bewildered.

"Hey!" Some guy in the bar yelled, his hand bleeding, "Take my blood, scare my customers, but _dear god_ man, she's just a little girl!"

Brygida was suddenly pulled aside by some woman from the bar who crooned, "Don't worry sweetheart, they won't be taking you tonight..."

She raised an eyebrow, guessing that they didn't know that she was _with_ them.

"Please don't touch me." She said, yanking her arm away from the woman, quickly following after Rorschach and Nite Owl. The woman blinked and grabbed Brygida's arm, dragging her back.

"Listen cupcake." She said, and Rorschach stopped to see what the hold up was, while Daniel cursed himself for not noticing Hollis's death, "I know that most girls your age develop Stockholm Syndrome _real_ easy, but you have to see, these men are not nice people. Stay with us, we'll take care of you."

"Like you took care of him?" Brygida pointed to the man with the bleeding hand, "I don't trust you people. Now please let me go."

The woman sighed, "For you own good, I—"

Her wrist snapped under the weight of Rorschach's fist, and she stood there for a moment, staring at the oddly shaped appendage before she started screaming. Her friends rushed to her aid, hissing like alley cats at Rorschach and Brygida as they ran out.

"Thanks." Brygida said with a quick smile to Rorschach, before turning to Dan, who was cursing at himself.

"Hollis... Oh Christ man, _why?_ W-We must have missed it on the news, probably not important enough for repeat bulletins... Some useless old guy... Oh shit." He handed a remote to Rorschach, "Take this and bring Archie down. I can't see."

"_Unidentified gang murders Mason. Supports mask-killer theory."_ Rorschach pressed a few buttons on the remote and a high whirring sound pierced the air before slipping into a low hum.

Daniel took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, "Look, I don't care! Right now I don't care about whose theory is best! Just _shut up_ and bring the ship down."

Brygida was slightly taken aback by Dan's hostility. All Rorschach seemed to talk about was how great it was to work with him again, and Daniel was _yelling_ at him for something that wasn't his fault. She crossed her arms, "You know Dan, I don't think that Rorschach was trying to spite you. In fact, I think he was trying to _comfort_ you with the fact that the closer you get to this..." She waved her hand around, "Mask-killer, the closer you get to avenging your friend." She looked at Rorschach, "Right?"

He nodded, _"Basically."_

Dan opened his eyes, "Comfort me? I don't..." He sighed, "Yeah, okay. Thanks Rorschach. Really, thank you."

"_You're welcome. Now know who paid to kill Adrian Veidt. Information should convince him to help us." _Rorschach replied as Archie hummed to a stop on the street in front of them.

"Sure..." Dan said as the three of them approached the owl ship, "I can't believe he's dead. I remember Adrian telling me that the Egyptians regarded death as a voyage..."

"_Hurn. Nice idea if you can afford to go first class with the pharaohs... But judging by our departures, most of us travel steerage."_

Brygida laughed a little at Rorschach's comment before Archie opened up and she stepped inside, asking, "Who's Adrian? Was he another mask with you two in the olden days?"

"Well I wouldn't call them _olden days_... But yes. You may recognize the name Ozymandias, AKA Adrian Veidt, owner of Veidt Industries..." Dan replied.

"... Oh wait, the blond pansexual guy with the bad cologne?"

"Uh... Pansexual?"

Brygida cleared her throat, "Meaning, he can find beauty in everything, and/or he can be attracted to anyone. I know that there are speculations about him being gay, but I don't think that's _all_ he is." She sat down in one of the chairs in Archie, "I mean, the guy's basically the vegetarian Caligula of modern culture."

Rorschach made a noise, _"Hurm. Good way of putting it. Parents dead, only child, self-proclaimed emperor of a large syndicate. Don't want to picture him having orgies, though not an improbable happening."_

Brygida laughed, "I think you're one of the few people who doesn't want to picture that kind of a thing. Though, Caligula's reign was quite short comparatively."

"_Never know. Empires have tendency to fall. Will be able to ask him about inevitability of decay when we see him."_

"... W-wait. We're going to... _see_ him??" Brygida was practically speechless. It wasn't everyday that you...

'_I'm not even going to think about the many things that you don't do everyday that I'm doing _right now..._'_ She thought to herself.

Daniel nodded to her question, slipping on his goggles, "There was an attempt on his life a little while ago. We need to ask him some questions, and we may or may not need to bring him along to help us."

"Oh... Alright." She found it hard to imagine a casual meeting with the playboy billionaire. Found it even harder to imagine Dan and Rorschach at said casual meeting. They all had turned out to be such different people; or maybe Adrian Veidt was just as crazy as Rorschach, and just used it in a different way.

Archie held a comfortable silence as she flew over the city and above the dream clouds. While Dan drove, Brygida stared out the window, Rorschach staring with her. After coming to terms with the fact that Rorschach was, in fact, _not_ the monster under the bed, Brygida had become a lot more comfortable with him. He had been helping her a lot that day as well. And when you broke through those single and double worded answers, he was quite the conversationalist.

And she was happy.

Daniel too, made her very happy. He was becoming more of a surrogate older brother, instead of just some friend. Brygida found it hard to believe that these men were most likely in their forties. They were so much more lively than what their ages gave off. And god, could they kick ass. She found herself smiling out to the city, thinking that none of them knew what they were missing when they passed the Keene Act...

They finally reached the Veidt building. There was an open window, strangely enough, in the front of the building, and Brygida found it odd that Rorschach and Daniel _didn't_ find it odd and just took advantage of it to worm their way into the topmost room. The two of the leapt over the gap between Archie and the building, and Daniel held out his hand for Brygida.

She shook her head, "I want to do it."

Daniel, pleasantly surprised, nodded and moved away. Brygida bit her lip and backed up a little bit. With a running leap, she propelled herself forward and just _barely_ landed on the thin rimming of the window.

She let out a sigh of relief, and smiled, "That felt good! I should start doing things on my ow—" A slight breeze made her lose her balance and she started falling backwards...

A gloved hand caught hers.

"_Not very good at keeping your balance."_ Rorschach pointed out, pulling the girl back into the room with a slight tug.

She sighed, "I was doing fine up until that point..." She glanced up at him, "Thank you..."

Adrian apparently wasn't there. While Dan and Rorschach attempted to figure out what was going on, Brygida wandered the room. There were Ozymandias action figures, their expressions blank and nameless behind their glass casing. There were other models, too. Rorschach, Nite Owl, Dr. Manhattan... The whole gang was there. The Comedian as well, whom she had heard died earlier that month. She opened the case, removing the Rorschach model. His hat popped off, and there was a grappling gun in his hand that could be removed as well.

She was soon in her own little world, making sound effects and creating childish plotlines for the group of superheroes to play out.

"Quick, Silk Specter! Kick him in the junk! It's the _only way_ to save the world!" The tiny Nite Owl screeched as the tiny Silk Specter moved her foot into Moloch's crotch. The tiny Moloch leaned over in pain as the other tiny superheroes jumped around and cried out happily.

"Now Laurie, I can tell you about my true feelings." Tiny Dan said, on his knees in front of tiny Laurie, "I love you!"

"I love you too! Let's run away together!"

The one-woman audience 'aww'ed.

"To where, dearest?"

"Erm... Back to the glass case!" The tiny Laurie cried as two shadows overcast the bunch of superheroes, and their antics and missions would soon be no more.

Big Dan chuckled, "Come on kiddo, put them away. We have to go."

"Where are we going?" She asked, picking up the tiny figurines.

"Antarctica."


	10. Your Imprint

Oh my god last installment! Yeah, so, granted, this one's kind of short. Really, there wasn't much left to do, but I tried to flesh it out as much as I could. I hope I did an alright job, I was in a strange mood whilst writing this one. I actually put it off for a while because I couldn't bring myself to actually write it.

But now it's done, and the end of the Graphic Novel has come. I used some things that were movieverse because I felt like they made more sense, but they really don't change anything. There's an author's note at the end as well that you should _probably_ read.

Oh, one last thing. A conversation in one of the discussion forums kind of freaked me out about how many Watchmen fics were out now... I dunno. Just thought I'd add that.

Enjoy!

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The sun burned cold in the sky, colored an almost icy yellow behind the frozen clouds in the great Antarctic. Thankfully, Archie was warm and comfortable. Brygida held herself close, the sight of all that ice and snow making her insides cold. What she wanted was another body to hold, but since Dan was driving and Rorschach would probably deny access, she resorted to her own body heat that she barely retained anyway.

"_How much further? Said we were over Antarctica hours ago." _Rorschach complained.

"Veidt's fortress is nearby, along the coastline. That's what I'm following. Listen, I don't like the way Archie's handling. I'm going to take him down." Dan replied, and Brygida felt all her weight slowly begin to fall out from under her as they descended on a fairly quick and steep scale. It was quite foggy, and she felt slightly less safe than before...

"_Sensible move. Make final approach low, beneath radar."_

"I don't think we've got much _choice_." Daniel said as Archie jerked a bit, "You feel that sort of _kicking_ in the engine, like it's about to _seize_? ... Ice. Shit. I bet it's ice. I had him soaking on a river bed all yesterday, then bring him into subzero temperatures! Why didn't I _think?_"

Brygida saw Rorschach raise his hand and point towards...

"_Daniel... Coming in too low towards cliffs..."_

There was an entire _ice face_ in front of them; a tall, seemingly never ending piece of pure, grade A, bound-to-crack-your-skull-open cliff of _ice_.

"Oh god..." Brygida's eyes went wide and she pulled the white owl cloak over her head.

"_Don't wish to interfere with running of ship, but should perhaps pull up sharply before—"_

"I'm _trying!_ I'm _trying_ to pull him up, goddamm it!" Daniel replied loudly, through clenched teeth, "**Wait! **Wait, I think it's coming. I think we've..."

Daniel bit his tongue as Archie made a slow scale up the cliff and just barely made it to the flat surface, "... made it!" Daniel exclaimed.

"_... Daniel..."_ Rorschach said, his tone less enthusiastic than normal.

"It's okay, we did it! We cleared the—"

"_Daniel, engine just stopped."_

"What?"

"_Said engine just—"_

"**Alright** alright, I know! Jesus Christ..." Archie began to lose altitude and gain speed.

"D-Dan..." Brygida stuttered, clutching to the chair. She had never even been in a _car accident_, and no doubt an Archie accident would be worse.

"Hang on, lemme try to... **Whoo... Ooah...**" He made strange noises that reminded the girl of Rorschach, slightly side tracking her from the soon to be fall...

"_Ennk..."_

"Hold on to something! I'm _losing_ it! He's rolling! I think we're going to—"

Daniel was cut off as they tumbled to the ground, the sudden impact being just what Brygida had imagined as she smacked her left arm on the chair and heard a slight _crack_. Archie slowly came to a stop after skidding a good 6 yards or so. Brygida stood up and moaned a little.

"Oh god that hurt..." She shook her head, attempting to rid herself of the dizziness.

"Ow... Sorry..." Daniel stood up as well and looked at Rorschach, "You okay?"

"_Twisted ankle. Nothing serious. Landed on it badly night police took me in. How bad is damage to ship?"_

Brygida felt her arm down from her shoulder. She had a bruise just above her elbow, but that didn't hurt much. It was below her elbow that really hurt. She felt like she might have fractured it in the fall... But it moved decently and she could still feel it, so she took that as a good sign.

Daniel had picked up the white owl suit and slipped it on, and he and Rorschach were leaving. She quickly moved to follow, and before she could exit the owl ship, the door closed. She skittered up to the front and banged on the window, "Hey!!"

Daniel looked in at her and shook his head, "Not this time! Stay here until we get back!"

Brygida pouted and sat on the floor.

Outside the ship, Dan turned on his hover scooter. Rorschach looked at him.

"_Might not get back. Could turn out to be a bad idea if we left her."_

"If we don't get back, at least she'd be safe until Adrian's people found her... And he wouldn't hurt a young girl. She's better off in there."

______________________________________________________________________

In Archie, Brygida felt herself going through the five stages of death, even though she wasn't dying... At least, she didn't think she was dying.

"They'll come back for me... They HAVE to come back for me... It's their fucking _job_ to come back for me..." Brygida breathed, sprawled out on the floor of Archie like a cat in the sun. She scratched her nose and turned over, sighing loudly. They had left her there, in the cold. Sure it was warm inside Archie, but she would have much rather been out there with _them_, meeting the famous Adrian Veidt, blond sex idol.

"What gives them the fucking right to leave me here all alone, anyway?!" She growled, standing up as she slipped into the _Anger_ stage, "I should be able to go with them! I'm not some baby!" She picked up a glass mug that had fallen in the crash and chucked it across the small room. It shattered on impact, and she jumped, not expecting it to have actually broken.

"Shit--!" She quickly got to her knees and started picking up the pieces. She wasn't getting anywhere by being angry, she realized...

"Okay." She took a deep breath and let it out as she picked up the final few pieces and threw them in the trash, "If they come back and get me, I swear to god, I won't do anything bad. I'll leave them to deal with Mr. Veidt and everything, I just don't want to be left alone... I don't enjoy being alone..."

And after another 15 minutes of promising, she dissolved to tears. Not very many. Just a few pathetic droplets of shallow sorrow and self-hatred. She curled into a ball after having taken the second snowsuit from the wall and laid in on the ground. She sniffled, wiping the tears from her cheeks as she whimpered for a little bit longer, just to take up time as she thought about following after them...

And she took another deep breath.

"Alright." She rolled up her sleeves, "Let's do this..."

She took the suit on the floor and put it on. It was _way_ too big for her, but that didn't matter as long as it kept her warm. She tied the belt tightly around her waist, flipped up the hood, and opened the door of Archie. And she was met by a blast of wind too cold to even be possible. She stepped out, closing the door behind her.

The compound was pretty much a stone's throw away, and she thanked Daniel over and over for making the owl ship amazing enough to get them so close. She walked down Archie's side and _fumped_ into the snow. She shuddered, feeling the cold beginning to melt against the warmth of the suit. She began to trudge, finding it more difficult than she had originally thought.

It wasn't only like wading through mud. Oh no. Mud was much kinder to the limbs. Her toes had already started to go numb. The cold moved through you like a hateful ghost, and there wasn't much you could do about it. Brygida trudged faster, feeling her nose begin to run. She felt like her snot was going faster than she was. As a comfort, she played the aria _Sebben Crudele_ by Antonio Caldara in her head. The key of E minor in a place like the Antarctic was almost comforting as she continued through the snow, her mind on the music and not on the snow.

And soon, she was at an entrance. It looked like it was stuck, like it had been forced open. Probably Rorschach and Daniel. She walked in and shivered as the song was dispelled from her mind and she saw the interior of the compound. She first came to what looked like a lab, every kind of technological doohickey imaginable inside. She didn't know what to call any of it. There was a glowing thing, a chamber thing, a... round, thing. She didn't hear any noises coming from anything, so she could only assume that no one was there. Leaving the snowsuit in a corner that looked safe enough, she moved into the next room...

And she wasn't expecting such splendor. There was a large painting of what looked like a Roman soldier up on the purple wall. There was a bed of flowers in the middle of the foyer, huge purple pillars placed around the room. Brygida stared for a moment before shaking her head and moving on. She heard the sound of multiple televisions fighting for attention, and raised an eyebrow. Why would someone want so many TVs? Maybe Mr. Veidt was an addict.

She walked towards the sound, moving around pillars and through precariously placed flowerbeds, feeling as if she were in a gay jungle rather than the home of a rich person. She saw a shifting light coming from a door, and heard both voices and static behind it. Pushing the door open, she was surprised and delighted to see Laurie and Jon there with Rorschach, Dan and a blond man she could only imagine was Adrian Veidt.

Smiling, she approached the woman, capturing her in a hug. Laurie jerked away and turned around. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears past and present, black make up streaked down her cheeks. Brygida's delight vanished instantly, "Laurie, what's wrong...?"

The woman didn't respond and instead turned to Dan, hissing, "You brought her here?!"

"At least she wasn't in New York!" Daniel snarled back, his sudden ferocity disappearing when Laurie choked back another sob, "Sorry..."

She shook her head, "I have no reason to be angry at you..." She turned back to Brygida and hugged her tightly, "I'm so glad you're alright..."

"Why... Why wouldn't I be?" The younger girl asked, trying to get a look at the televisions that Laurie seemed to be blocking from her view.

"Bridget..." Laurie tried to take her outside of the room, but the girl pulled away from her.

"Laurie, what's going on?" She asked

"I'll tell you out there..." Laurie's voice was pleading.

Brygida shook her head and looked at the televisions. All of them were a different channel, and she saw bodies being dragged from wreckage, little children in the arms of strangers, a gaping hole in the middle of a city. A broken sign flashed on the screen:

**Welcome To New York**

Brygida stared at the televisions, "Is this some kind of Sci-Fi marathon or something? I can't believe someone would make a movie about destroying New York, especially now."

She heard Laurie begin to break down. She turned around, "What? Am I not getting something here?"

"New York is gone, Bridget." Jon said, stepping into the conversation.

"What? No it's not." She laughed, "It's still there, you can't just destroy a city."

"I can't do this..." Laurie walked out of the room, a hand at her mouth and new tears running down her cheeks.

Brygida looked at the door and then back at Jon, "... Am I wrong?"

He nodded, "New York has been gone for about 9 minutes now. I am sorry. All of your friends, and your family were there..."

Brygida didn't say anything to him. She looked at Rorschach and Daniel, "Is it true...?"

Rorschach looked away, and Dan tried to make words, but nothing came out. He joined Rorschach in looking away. Brygida blinked a couple times and looked back at the TVs. She recognized a couple things. Her old apartment was in shambles; she saw the body of her landlady being dragged away. Half of Central Park was gone in the crater in the middle of the city.

She saw Michelle's body... And it suddenly hit her. It was all gone. She couldn't breath. She couldn't think. Her pupils contracted as she leaned up against a pillar and tried to catch her breath. But every body of a person she knew made it all the more terrible. She felt warm tears trickling down her cheeks, but they didn't register as she sank into the floor. Someone laid their hand on her head, and she winced back. It hurt her to be touched.

"How did this happen...?" She asked in a whisper, almost unable to speak, "Who...?"

Someone took hold her hand and hauled her up, and she found herself staring into the dark eyes of one Adrian Veidt as he spoke:

"I did this."

Something in Brygida made her want drag her nails across the man's face, scream at him until she was hoarse, stab him in the back, beat him until he bled out of every orifice...

But she couldn't. So she unconsciously put her forehead onto his chest and cried, because she felt like that was the only thing that she could do. He didn't touch her, nor did he move. She didn't hear anything, even though she knew they were talking. But she heard the door open and close, and she knew that it was Rorschach who had gone. She found it hard to find the strength to pick up her feet and follow after him, but ironically enough, Veidt helped her. He put her chin in his palm, brought her face up to look at his, and smiled.

She slapped him across the face-

And walked towards the door.

She saw no color. Felt no cold, no heat. Ignored the heaviness in her head, her heart, her feet, and just walked. She felt confined to basics. And at that moment, the basics were all she knew.

Keep moving.

Don't stop.

Just walk.

And she was soon at the makeshift entrance. She saw Rorschach; he was just standing there. She moved towards him, not caring that he would probably beat her within an inch of her life if she did what she was planning on doing...

Around the corner, she saw Jon, his arm outstretched towards Rorschach. The red head removed his mask, and the tears sprinkled about his cheeks snapped her back to reality as she began to cry again, the color and sound and feeling returning to everything, and she smiled, reaching her hand out to...

"You _are_ real..." Brygida whispered, feeling Walter's cheek beneath her fingers. He was real... He had a face. She felt stubble, and skin, and the cold wetness of actual tears, and his eyes met hers...

... And he was gone. Brygida stumbled forward, feeling suddenly unbalanced. She looked at Jon, whose expression could be considered that of horror. She stared at the space in front of her. There was blood in the snow.

"I'm... sorry..." Jon said slowly as his fingers twitched slightly.

"... It's alright." Brygida replied, "Can you teleport me to...?"

"Of course..."

She felt the world fall out from under her as she closed her eyes. She opened them as it was returned to her, and she was back inside the compound. She stumbled to the left, falling into a pillar as she saw Dan and Laurie and smiled at them...

They looked completely horrified. Adrian Veidt too looked dumbstruck, and Brygida thought it odd and humorous that the smartest man on earth could be dumbstruck...

She felt warm liquid running down the outside of her leg. She couldn't piss on herself from the outside, so she looked at her right shoulder—

Laurie grabbed the girl's face and made her look at her, "Bridget? Baby? Stay with me, alright? You're going to be okay. Look at m- LOOK at me!"

Brygida was confused, "I am looking at... you..." Her eyelids fluttered and she felt tired beyond belief.

She heard Dan and Mr. Veidt talking.

"We need to get her to a hospital..."

"In the middle of Antarctica? Daniel, she won't survive the trip..."

"Well I'm not leaving her here with you! **Her arm...**"

Brygida blacked out...

Her unconscious dreams were horrible to her. Her head recapped her entire life.

She dreamt about the night of her sixth birthday, when Laurie brought Jon over as her own personal party clown. The children's mothers didn't allow them to stay very long at the party: they claimed that none of them were worthy to be around Jon for very long. So the young Brygida played with Jon all day, on her own.

She remembered her first professional vocal performance, after dropping out of high school. She blanked out on her first song and ended up restarting. Everyone around her told her that she did wonderfully, but she never forgave herself for it. Her mother had treated her to her first alcoholic drink that night after stealing the unopened bottle from her husband, who had already passed out. Brygida found out that she could really hold her liquor.

She remembered the night that the man attempted to mug her, and how Rorschach had... knocked her out. And introduced her to Dan. And then blew her off. And then returned her glasses. And then in front of the fire...

And became her friend. She didn't know if he considered her a friend, but she did to him. Yes, he smelled gross, but his mind was just _lush_ with ideas... After talking with him during the time that they were considered fugitives... His intelligence was intoxicating. It was so wonderful to know someone who wasn't just smart, but so witty and astute, and...

Through the darkness, she saw a light. Only a slight twinkle at the edge of her consciousness, but it was there. Like a star... She stared at it inside of her head, finding it a strange and strong comfort. She stood up, feeling as if her entire body was made of clouds as she floated on dreamy steps towards it. Maybe Rorschach would be there... Maybe Walter would be there...

Maybe it was the Hell that she had always dreamed she would eventually go to.

The light was blinding, but Brygida's eyes were otherworldly, and immune to such a sensitivity. She came to the source of the light, and smiling, touched it...

It felt like skin...

And she started crying...

Rorschach _was_ real...

But now he was dead.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

There IS going to be a sequel. Keep an open mind kids, I thought about it for a long time, and personally, I think that it's a decent idea. It may have my readers dropping like flies because I move REALLY slowly with stuff like this, but I don't care much.

Look out for the sequel, guys! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing this much! You're all amazing!


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